"Man for the field and woman for the hearth, man for the sword and for the needle she, man with the head and woman with the heart, man to command and women to obey" to what extent does Tennyson's poetry conform to these gender stereotypes?

"Man for the field and woman for the hearth, man for the sword and for the needle she, man with the head and woman with the heart, man to command and women to obey" to what extent does Tennyson's poetry conform to these gender stereotypes? Lord Alfred Tennyson was one of the best poets of the 19th century, his works inspiring writers even today. Tennyson uses a lot of his own experience and beliefs in his poems; it is probable that they were his medium for spreading his 'message'. One of his poems, Ulysses, tells of a brave King of Ithaca, Ulysses (also known as Odysseus) who lead the Cephallenians against Troy. Ulysses is very much a figure of masculinity, he is a brave warrior king who has travelled the oceans and is an important icon in Greek mythology. In this poem Ulysses tells of how he yearns for more adventure and finally decides to make one last voyage in search of a "newer world", he is old and it is implied that he will not return alive. As well as being adventurous and brave Ulysses takes great pride in leaving his son his kingship, "This is my son Telemachus, To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle-", it is quite stereotypical of a man to want his first born son to rule after him. The only mention of Ulysses' wife is "Match'd with an aged wife," which is hardly a positive comment, she is female and therefore is nothing to do with Ulysses' adventures and deeds,

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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"The Lady of Shalott" - review

"The Lady of Shalott" The poem "The Lady of Shalott" is about the Lady of Shalott who is on the island of Shalott and in the castle. She loves Sir Lancelot but they cannot be together because if she stops weaving a curse will be upon her and she will die, but she cannot stop loving Lancelot who has not seen her before, therefore she stops weaving and goes out the castle down to Camelot in a boat where she dies. Tennyson uses key elements like imagery and style which he uses effectively to put across his views. Some effective imagery in the poem is mostly movement as in section one there is a considerable amount of movement words, making it seem like there is a lot happening, "And through the field the road run by" This is emphasised by the number of people there are in the poem like the "market girls" and the "village churls", movement imagery also implies there is a lot going on, "Up and down the people go" The use of colours has also been used very much and it has an effect on the mood and the atmosphere created, "Hung in the golden galaxy, the bride bells rang merrily" The gold colour makes you feel happy and cheerful contrary to the pale yellow in the following quote which makes it all dark and gloomy by using words such as "complaining". "The pale yellow woods were waning, the broad stream in his banks complaining." The atmosphere in each section differs and

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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Why does Alfred Lord Tennyson Make Arthurian world look like the Golden Age?

Why does Alfred Lord Tennyson Make Arthurian world look like the Golden Age? In this essay, I will talk about five poems by Alfred Lord Tennyson, and how he makes them reflect upon the Victorian period. The five poems are: "Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinnevere," "The Coming of Arthur, " "The Lady of Shalott," "Sir Galahad," "Morte d'Arthur." I will debate how Tennyson speaks badly of this age throe those five poems. "Sir Galahad" is a poem about a knight who belongs to the Knights of the Round Table and lives in the Golden Age. This poem describes the perfections, and imperfections of an ideal knight. Alfred Lord Tennyson speaks of the duties that a knight has as very hard and that every knight should go through a rough time in his life. This poem describes Sir Galahad as a perfect knight, because he does not follow his heart or soul, but follows the command of his King, and shows loyalty and honour to his country. Sir Galahad is a virgin, who can avoid the temptations of losing his virginity: "Nor maiden's hand in mine." By acting in this way, we can see that Sir Galahad is spiritually trapped because he has committed himself to serving the king. However, Tennyson also shows us the suffering that this knight is going throe, as we get the impression that his should is trapped in his body. This poem creates a cold, and a dark atmosphere and seems to be set in the winter

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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How does Tennyson bring mental pessimism and Victorian optimism in his use of myths and legends?

How does Tennyson bring mental pessimism and Victorian optimism in his use of myths and legends? Ans.: "And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night." [Dover Beach: Mathew Arnold] "The year is at the spring And day is at the morn, ... God's in heaven, All is right with world." [Pippa Passes: Robert Browning] These above quoted two quotations are from two renowned poets of Victorian arena show the contrast attitudes to their time. Browning is very optimistic of everything because he does not have any mental torment of his age. On the contrary Mathew Arnold is very critical of his age, which he has found barren and sterile dominated by materialistic views and so spiritually degenerated. But Tennyson is almost a mixture of Browning's and Arnold's feelings. In some of his poems he is very happy about everything in which he is passing his life and in some of his poems he is very melancholic about his surroundings. These joys and sorrows are pre-dominated in him due to some of mental crises and the condition of the Victorian age in which he was. Some of the greatest poems created by Tennyson are based on myths and legends. He possessed the talent of giving the myths and legends a very new look just to show how these poems adjust with the people and the crises of his time. These poems

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Comparative Essay: Frost and Tennyson

Shafika Taylor Per. 03 Mrs. K IB English 1-2 Comparative Essay: Frost and Tennyson Robert Frost and Alfred Tennyson approached very similar subjects, but used different literary devices to represent them. Frost utilizes rhyme scheme, personification, and references to nature, while Tennyson employs allusions to Greek mythology, imagery, and metaphors. Responsibility is a theme that they both touch on time and time again, although the way they approach it is different. Poems "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening" and," Birches", both relate to responsibility, as do Tennyson's "Ulysses" and "Lotus Eater". In poems, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", by Frost, and "Ulysses", by Tennyson, the reader is being introduced to two individuals. The similarity between these two poems is that the individuals both recognize that they do have responsibilities, but the way they approach and deal with them is different. The individual in "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" comes to this wonderful peaceful place, and wants to just stop and rest, and enjoy the scenery. Frost refers to nature and rhyme scheme to express the speaker's desire for rest, and a stop to his endless burdens. The first thing that comes to mind with this line is calmness and serenity, "He will not see me stopping here to watch his woods fill up with snow." (Frost, ll. 3, 4). Having no worries.

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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Analysis of 'Break, Break, Break' by Tennyson

Break, Break, Break by Alfred Lord Tennyson is a lyrical poem that portrays the despairing emotional fibre of the poet through the melancholic presentation of the poetic voice. The poem is generally believed to have been written in response to the death of Tennyson's close friend and the poem therefore centers on Tennyson's grief inherent within this loss. The poet presents the synonymous grief and emptiness exemplified in the speaker's realisation of the loss of youth and humanity's powerlessness against time through his effective employment of poetic form, imagery, phonetics, metre and structure. In doing so, the poet presents and explores the central concern of the poem: the inexorability of time, and thus the overlooked value of youth. In Break, Break, Break, Tennyson immediately establishes a depressive atmosphere in the first quatrain. For example, the use of repetition, 'Break, break, break', in the first line, and indeed in the title, creates a despairing tone in itself, mirroring the melancholy of the poetic voice. This effect is enhanced through the employment of the alliterative plosive in this example, creating a sense of despondency intertwined with indignation inherent in the emotional fibre of the speaker. Furthermore, Tennyson introduces the extended metaphor central to the poem in this first stanza: 'On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! / And I would that

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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Critical Commentary - Mariana

Critical Commentary Mariana 'Mariana', written by Lord Alfred Tennyson - a poet of the romanticist era - revolves around one character only who awaits the arrival of her renegade lover who never arrives: Mariana. She is alluded to the character of the same name and demeanour in Shakespeare's play 'Measure for Measure'. The simplistic title consisting of only the character's name suggests that she is indeed the main subject of the poem. It begins with an epigraph, 'Mariana in the moated grange', taken from the aforementioned Shakespeare play. The epigraph offers the readers a glimpse of what is to come in the poem, and it does shed light on the fact that Mariana is an isolated figure (physically so, because she is surrounded by a moat) on a dilapidated grange. The concept of a dilapidated grange is emphasised in the first eight lines of the poem. The first line paints a picture of a dark, gloomy surrounding, as 'blackest moss' suggests. Not only is there moss, but also it is black. The colour black often connotes evil and strange nightly mysterious deeds. It 'thickly crust[ed]' the flower-plots, suggesting a long time has passed since the garden and the house was tended to, as does 'rusted nails'. Tennyson also describes the 'unlifted' clinking latch, therefore suggestive of the fact that nobody has entered or been out of the house for a considerable length of time.

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The Lady Of Shalott Feminist Reading

IT CAN BE ARGUED THAT "THE LADY OF SHALOTT CHALLENGES THE ROLE OF WOMEN WITHIN A VICTORIAN SOCIETY." DISCUSS. Tennyson's The Lady of Shalott portrays the role for women during the Victorian era and the desire for the main character of the poem to relinquish her female restraints and enter a male dominated society. The Lady of Shalott is set during a period when society was restrained by the Victorian chain-of-being which deemed women to unequal to the supreme male dominance for example they had limited access to education and married women of higher classes were forbidden to work. It can be argued that Tennyson uses his main character to represent the increased activity of women activists who were petitioning for equality between the genders and most importantly the right to vote and were ultimately punished for doing so. The character's rejection of the Victorian values of femininity leads to her ruin as she refuses to accept the boundaries her gender enforces upon her. As a result, the male dominated society destroys her because there is no place for an assertive female. Tennyson presents the Lady of Shalott as an outsider who is to remain on the verge of a patriarchal society, isolated on her own "silent isle" through use of setting. With the use of dismal imagery, Tennyson constructs the setting to resemble a prison with "four grey walls, and four grey towers" entrapping

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"Ulysses" by Lord Alfred Tennyson

"Ulysses" by Lord Alfred Tennyson "I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use! As tho' to breathe were life. Life piled on life Were all too little, and of one to me Little remains: but every hour is saved From that eternal silence..." "Ulysses" is a poem by Lord Alfred Tennyson which was written after Tennyson learned about his friend's death, and published in Poems in 1842. The given poem and the ten lines presented above are a good example of how form and certain concepts the author uses help him to reflect the meaning of the work and make it clear and easy-understandable. These ten lines speak about living life as fully as possibly and point out the connection of a man with everything and everyone he has ever seen or met. Experience gained during the long life is compared to an arch through which one sees a lot of places unseen and undiscovered yet - the more one sees and experiences, the sharper he understands that there is still much more to see and live through. As a whole, the character of Ulysses is used to symbolize the people of the Victorian age. Ulysses got educated through his adventures which also disillusioned him, and can be compared to the

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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Are these poems about a lost past, or are they really about Victorian England?

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). One of tennysons renowned poems "Lady of Shalott" is clearly about what

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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