ENGL 3653: English Literature II

John M. Mercer, Professor of English

Northeastern State University, Broken Arrow, Oklahoma

Study Guide 7: Tennyson and Ruskin

Revised 2-22-07

 

Memorization

For extra credit, you may always memorize lines, stanzas, or entire poems of your choice from assigned poems. To receive your points, recite these lines in class or say them to me privately.

 

Poetic Meter

You will need to refer to the following information throughout the rest of this course.  Please bring this study guide with you to each class meeting.

 

To identify poetic meter, identify the dominant poetic foot and the number of feet per line.

These are the most frequently used poetic feet:

·        iamb, iambic foot               c  /

·        trochee, trochaic foot          /  c

·        dactyl, dactylic foot       /  c  c

·        anapest, anapestic foot        c  c  /

·        spondee, spondaic foot       /  /

[Spondee is not used for an entire poem but to substitute for an occasional foot within a line.]

These are the most frequently used poetic lines:

·        dimeter = 2 feet per line

·        trimeter = 3 feet per line

·        tetrameter = 4 feet per line

·        pentameter = 5 feet per line

·        hexameter = 6 feet per line

·        octameter = 8 feet per line

 

 Introduction to Tennyson

  1. What was the occupation of Tennyson’s father? 
  2. What are Tennyson’s strengths as a poet?  What is meant by “scene painting”?
  3. What criticisms have been made of Tennyson’s poetry?
  4. What was Arthur Hallam’s relationship to Tennyson?

5.      What effect did the publication of In Memoriam A.H.H. have on Tennyson’s poetic career?

 

“Mariana,” 1112

1.      Who is Mariana?  What is Tennyson’s source for this character? 

2.      Extra-credit research: What information about this character does Tennyson take from his source, and what about her is his own invention?

3.      What is a “moated grange”?

4.      What is a refrain?  What use of refrain does this poem make?

5.      How is this poem an example of Tennyson’s “scene painting”?

 

“The Lady of Shalott,” 1114

  1. This is a typically Romantic poem.  What characteristics of Romanticism can you identify in the poem?
  2. What are we told about the Lady of Shalott’s situation as it stands at the beginning of the poem?  What questions about her initial situation does the poem not answer?
  3. To keep a curse from coming upon her, what must she refrain from doing?
  4. Why and how does she activate the curse?
  5. What happens to her after she activates the curse?
  6. What questions about the Lady of Shalott and Lancelot are left unanswered at the end of the poem?
  7. According to a footnote, what are the authors, titles, and dates of earlier versions of this story? Which source did Tennyson say he used?
  8. Extra-credit research: In earlier versions of this story, what is the relationship between the Lady of Shalott (Elaine) and Lancelot?  How does this information help explain what happens in the poem?
  9. Extra-credit research: What interpretations of this poem can you find?  What does the Lady of Shalott symbolize?
  10. Extra-credit research: This poem has inspired many painters, most notably John William Waterhouse, to paint the Lady of Shalott.  Find prints of these paintings.  What specific details from the poem do they reflect?  What details not included in the poem are found in the paintings?

 

“Ulysses,” 1123

  1. What are Tennyson’s two main sources for this poem? By what other name is Ulysses often  known?  Why does he have two different names?
  2. What is the speaker’s situation in this poem?  Why is he unhappy with his current situation?
  3. What decision does Ulysses make?  Why does he make this choice?
  4. The poem’s last line—“To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield”—is well known. In the context of the poem, what does this line mean?

 

 “Break, Break, Break,” 1126

1.      Scan the meter (i.e., mark the accented and unaccented syllables) for one stanza of this poem. How does the meter mimic the rhythm of the waves described in the poem?

2.      [After you have finished reading Tennyson’s poems:] What other poems by Tennyson share similar subject matter?

 

“Locksley Hall,” 1129

1.      What is the meter of this poem?  (See “Poetic Meter” at the beginning of this study guide.)   Here is a scansion of a well-known line that illustrates the meter:  

 

      /     c  |‌‌     /     c |   /          /     |     /  c | /  c         |     /   c  |   /          c |  /      

      AIn the spring a young man=s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.” (1129, line 20)

 

2.      What expected syllable has the poet truncated (omitted) from the end of the line?  

3.      Where in the line does a different foot substitute for the dominant foot?

4.      What is the EFFECT of this meter on the poem?

 

This poem can be sung to the tune of “O My Darlin’ Clementine.”  Try it; it’s fun! 

 

  1. What is the situation at the beginning of the poem?  Who is the speaker?  What is his connection with Locksley Hall?  Why is he now at Locksley Hall?
  2. What are the main steps in the relationship between the speaker and Amy?  Why did their relationship end?
  3. What is the speaker’s attitude toward Amy now?  What does he imagine that her marriage will be like?
  4. What future plans does the speaker consider for himself?
  5. What future inventions and events in world history does the speaker accurately predict?
  6. What is the significance of the blowing of the bugle?
  7. At the end of the poem, what WISH does the speaker express?  Why?

 

In Memoriam A. H. H., 1138

Critical reputation: The Victorians considered this to be Tennyson=s greatest work.  Critics today see it as uneven in quality, with strong and weak sections.  Only the “good parts” are in your textbook, and I have assigned only la crème de la crème. Some critics identify sections 95 and 103 as the “best” poems in the series. 

 

Composition: In Memoriam is a series of separate poems written from 1833 to 1849 and published in 1850.  For publication, Tennyson arranged them in a different order than the order of composition. 

 

1.      The poetic form of In Memoriam is called In Memoriam stanza.   What is the basic meter?  What is the rhyme scheme?

2.      Title: What does the phrase “in memoriam” mean in Latin?  What does “A.H.H.” stand for?

3.      Genre: In Memoriam is a particular type of lyric poem called an elegy.  What other elegy have we studied in this class?  In what ways are these two elegies similar?   

 

Distinctive features of this elegy:

·        It is not pastoral (except in a few sections).

4.      What does it mean to say that In Memoriam is “not pastoral”?

·        It lacks complete unity (partly because its poems were written separately).

·        The poet was a very close friend of the person mourned, unlike Shelley, who was not close to Keats.

 

Structure: Critic A. C. Bradley sees In Memoriam as a three-year cycle, marked by the celebration of Christmas in sections 28, 78, and 104.  The turning point is 78, when the deepest sorrow is past.  Hallam’s apotheosis is described in 126-30.

 

Theme: In this poem, the speaker comes to terms with the fact that everyone must die (the “relation of mortal man to the destiny of death”).  Working through doubt and confusion, Tennyson ultimately argues for the immortality of the soul, holding that humans must have this hope in face of modern doubt and materialism.

 

Selected Poems from In Memoriam

 

Prologue: The Prologue was written last, in 1849. Unlike much of the rest of In Memoriam, the Prologue expresses traditional Christian theology; several of these stanzas have been set to music and sung as Christian hymns. (A former student showed me these stanzas in a Presbyterian hymnal.)

1.      What Christian doctrines are expressed in the Prologue?

2.      How is stanza 5 (beginning with “Our little systems”) reminiscent of Carlyle’s Clothes Philosophy?

3.      The last 3 stanzas of the Prologue can be interpreted as a recantation of Tennyson’s attitudes in the rest of In Memoriam.  What is a recantation?  Of what does the speaker ask to be forgiven?

4.      In #7, how does the speaker feel when he revisits Hallam=s house in London?

5.      In #9, the speaker describes the ship that bears Hallam=s body from Italy.  What does the speaker say about his relationship with and love for Hallam?

6.      In #21, how do others taunt the grieving speaker?  How does the speaker justify his spending so much time in grief?  Which does he mean when he says, “Ye never knew the sacred dust” (line 22)?  In this line, “the sacred dust” actually refers to what or whom?  (This is a figure of speech called metonymy, naming something by something else closely associated with it.)

7.       In #24, the speaker raises the possibility that he may be idealizing the past.  What explanations does he offer for why he—and we all—may do this?

8.      In #27, what types of people does the speaker say he does NOT envy?  Why?  How do the famous lines “’Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all” (lines 15-16) fit into the speaker’s argument?

9.      In #28 and #30, the speaker writes about his family’s first Christmas after Hallam’s death. What details of the holiday celebration reveal the family’s great grief and sadness?

10.  Stanzas #54-#56 reflect the speaker’s time of deepest doubt. In the last two stanzas of #55, what imagery does the speaker use to describe his great crisis of faith?

11.  In #56, what specific references does the speaker make to the geological and biological evidence for evolution that seems to undermine his belief in immortality?

12.  In #78, the family celebrates the second Christmas since Hallam’s death. This poem has been called the turning point of In Memoriam.  What evidence in the poem indicates that the speaker’s deepest grief is now past?

13.  Considered one of the “best” poems in In Memoriam, #95 tells the story of the speaker’s being outside in the summer, reading old letters by AHH (lines 21-24) and then falling into a trance.  What are the main events in the plot of this narrative?

14.  In the other so-called “best” poem, #103, the speaker dreams about a statue of Hallam and about his own death.  Who greets the speaker in death?  What is the situation? Extra-credit research or prior knowledge: How is this scene similar to the death of King Arthur in Malory’s Morte Darthur?  (If you have volume 1 of The Norton Anthology of English Literature, look this up.)

15.  In #104-#105, the third Christmas after Hallam’s death is celebrated.  In #104, what lines indicate that the speaker’s family has now moved to a different place?   In #105, how is their celebration of Christmas different now than in the past?  How does the speaker justify this change in customs?  How do lines 19-20 relate to Carlyle’s Clothes Philosophy?

16.  In #106, the speaker celebrates the New Year, using several famous lines, including “Ring out the old, ring in the new” (1178, line 5).  What hopes for the future of the world does the speaker express?

17.  In #118, human evolution is the central focus.  What specific aspects of evolution are mentioned? What optimistic idea does the speaker take from evolution?

18.  In #124, the speaker expresses conflict between religious faith and doubt.  Does the speaker end #124 in faith or in doubt?  Support your answer.

19.  In #127, the speaker very imaginatively describes the apotheosis of Hallam.  What is the meaning of the word “apotheosis”?  What kind of apotheosis does Hallam experience?  How does Hallam’s apotheosis compare with Adonais’s in Shelley’s Adonais?

20.  In #130, what kind of union with Hallam does the speaker describe?  What philosophy and what specific poems from the Romantic Period express a similar kind of union?

21.  According to the footnote in your textbook, what occasion is described in the Epilogue? What lines compare the growth of a fetus to human evolution?

22.  With what attitude, in what state of mind, does the speaker end the Epilogue? How has the speaker’s attitude changed over the course of In Memoriam?

 

“The Charge of the Light Brigade,” 1188

  1. What was the Light Brigade?  In history, what was the sequence of events involving the Light Brigade?  Extra-credit research:  Beyond what is in your textbook, find historical information that relates to this poem.   
  2. What is the speaker’s attitude toward the members of the Light Brigade? 
  3. What rarely used poetic foot (see “Poetic Meter” at the beginning of this study guide) is prominent in this poem?  How does the meter help to communicate the content of the poem?

 

“Crossing the Bar,” 1211

1.      This poem is an extended metaphor for the speaker’s eventual death.  What are the specific figurative terms of this extended metaphor?  (The first two are “Sunset and evening star.”)  What scenario do these figurative terms describe?

2.      What does the speaker mean when he concludes the poem by saying, “I hope to see my Pilot face to face / When I have crossed the bar” (lines 15-16)? 

3.      Tone is the speaker’s or writer’s attitude toward the subject.  What is the speaker’s attitude toward death? toward God? toward immortality?  How would you describe the overall tone of the poem?  

                                                                                         

John Ruskin, 1317

1.      Ruskin picked up important but very different traits from each of his parents.  What did Ruskin get from his father?  What did he get from his mother?  How did both of these qualities contribute to his success as a writer?

 

Ruskin’s writing as a critic can be divided into 3 periods, based on the changing subjects of his criticism:

·        art

·        architecture

·        economics

2.      Into which of these periods does The Stones of Venice fit?

 

The Stones of Venice, 1324

Don’t worry too much about the first three paragraphs, which are very long and hard to follow.  Ruskin’s main point here is that the rough, imperfect Gothic architecture of northern Europe is appropriate to the mountainous topography of the region.

 

  1. Extra-credit research:  Find pictures of the great works of Gothic architecture, especially of the ornamentation, such as gargoyles, on the exterior of Gothic cathedrals. To what extent do these pictures support what Ruskin says about the rough imperfection of Gothic architecture?
  2. In your own words, what does Ruskin mean by each of the following main types of architectural ornamentation?  (The “inferior workman” or “executive inferior power” is an ordinary craftsman hired to help sculpt the decorative figures for a Gothic cathedral.)

a.       Servile ornament

b.      Constitutional ornament

c.       Revolutionary ornament

  1. Ruskin prefers Gothic architecture over other styles not primarily because of its appearance, as one might think, but because of the Constitutional system of ornament that produced it.  Why?  In the building of Gothic cathedrals, what attitude was taken toward ordinary craftsmen?
  2. In the factory system, what is division of labor?  What is Ruskin’s attitude toward division of labor?  Why?
  3. In your own words, what advice does Ruskin give Victorian consumers?  What is Ruskin’s attitude toward the demand for perfectly formed mass-produced items?
  4. What is Ruskin’s attitude toward the demand for perfection in art?  What criticism does he make of the great Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci?