Are these poems about a lost past, or are they really about Victorian England?

Authors Avatar

 Claudio Movio/ SM2

Are these poems about a lost past, or are they really about Victorian England?

Tennyson was very eager and talented as a writer and began with early attempts of play writing with his play The Devil and the Lady at the age of fourteen. He also attempted other work with his two brothers Frederick and Charles before he began his three years at Cambridge. During Tennyson’s time at Cambridge he wrote a prize-winning poem entitled Timbuctoo, which he wrote in 1829.

        Tennysons farther an intelligent clergyman in Lincolnshire died in 1831 which left Alfred incharge and responsible for the family and its income. Some of Alfred’s most famous pieces, such Lotus-Eaters, A Dream of Fair Women, and The Lady of Shalott were concluded in his volume Poems of 1832.

For a time after this Tennyson did not write many more poems for he was shocked by the sudden death of Hallam, a close friend which he met during his time in Cambridge. He later began to write again in 1842 with poem such as Locksley Hall, Ulysses, Morte d'Arthur by this time he was known as a great poet. In his poems from after 1842 we can see a change in his writing and notice that he has doubts about the modern scientific age and we can see his thoughts are incorporated in his poems, and how they are about a lost past (Morte d`Arthur).

Join now!

One of tennysons renowned poems “Lady of Shalott” is clearly about what it was like in Victorian times as we there a lot examples of how it would have been to live for an Victorian woman. This poem is about a lonely woman who is cursed to stay in her tower on the island of shalott just close to Camelot. The curse is that if she were to look out down to Camelot some thing bad will fall upon her though she does not know what ...

This is a preview of the whole essay