1. Alfred, Lord Tennyson 1909-1892

2. Tennyson  Tennyson was a massive and versatile poet, “the voice and sometimes... the conscience” of his age.  Today, many critics consider Tennyson to be the greatest poet of the Victorian Age, admired for both his control of language and his ability to evoke a sense of longing and loss.

3. Background  Born on August 6, 1809. at Somersby, U.K.  3rd son of a rector who prepared his sons for Cambridge. All made ventures in poetry, and even published.

4. Cambridge  Tennyson attended Trinity College, Cambridge  Invited to join The Apostles, an undergraduate club.  This group included his lifelong friends.  Most important friendship was with Arthur Hallam. He and Tennyson knew each other for only four years, but their intense friendship had a major influence on the poet.  Tennyson was devastated by Hallam’s death in 1833 when he was only 22 and refused to publish for the next 9 years. He did, however, continue to write and poured his grief into his best poetry, including In Memoriam.

5.  Published in 1850  Tennyson’s greatest poem  a collection of elegies for Hallam; it presents his struggle with Hallam’s death and with the new developments in astronomy, biology, and geology that were diminishing man’s stature in the universe.  After publication of this poem, Tennyson was named the nation’s Poet Laureate by Queen Victoria as, replacing Wordsworth who had just passed away. In Memoriam

6. His Major 1842 Poems  Established Tennyson’s career as a writer  This volume includes:  “The Lady of Shalott,”  “The Lotus Eaters,” and  “Ulysses.”

7. Tennyson  In 1883, Tennyson was made baron and thus added the title Lord to his name.  He was the first poet ever to be made a noble.  Tennyson was established as the most popular poet of the Victorian period.

8. Alfred, Lord Tennyson  He seems not one sort of poet, but two or three: PictorialLyric Humorous, or Speculative.

9. Alfred, Lord Tennyson  Tennyson gives us perfections in single poems, single stanzas, often in single lines or even in evocative phrases.  His narrative skill makes many of his poems many of his poems interesting just as stories. interesting just as stories.

10. Themes in Tennyson’s Poetry  The divided self  Links external scenery to interior states of mind.  The historical past  The mythological past  Tennyson’s personal past  Geological time and evolutionary history  Social and political concerns (Psychological Realism)

11. Images of Tennyson