Tennyson Among the Poets: Bicentenary Essays

by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, Seamus Perry

Overview

Published to mark the bicentenary of Alfred Tennyson's birth, these essays offer an important revaluation of his achievement and its lasting importance. After several years in which the temper of criticism has been largely political (and often hostile towards Tennyson in particular) a number of influential recent accounts of Victorian poetry have rediscovered the virtues of a closer style of reading and the benefits and pleasures of an approach that, without at all ignoring social and cultural contexts, approaches them through a primary alertness to textual detail and literary history. This volume, including entirely commissioned work by a wide range of critics and scholars from across the profession in both Britain and North America, seeks to bring such forms of attention to bear on the immense variety of Tennyson's career by exploring the complex and multiple connections between Tennyson and other writers - his predecessors, his contemporaries, and his successors. Collectively, the essays describe an intricate network of affiliation and indebtedness, resistance and reconciliation. They provide a unique assessment of Tennyson's origins, work, and imaginative legacy as he enters upon his third century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199557134
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	12/13/2009
Pages:	456
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.70(d)

Table of Contents

AcknowledgmentsNotes on ContributorsA Note on the Texts and AbbreviationsPrefatory Note, Christopher Ricks1. Tennyson's Dying Fall, Peter McDonald2. Tennyson's Retrospective View, Dinah Birch3. Tennyson's Limitations, Christopher Decker4. Tennyson's Grotesque, Aidan Day5. Tennyson, Browning, Virgil, Daniel Karlin6. Tennyson and the Voices of Ovid's Heroines, A. A. Markley7. On lines and grooves from Shakespeare to Tennyson, Eric Griffiths8. Epic Sensibilities: 'Old Man' Milton and the Making of Tennyson's iIdylls of the King/i, N. K. Sugimura9. The Wheels of Being: Tennyson and Shelley, Michael O'Neill10. 'Brother-poets': Tennyson and Browning, Donald S. Hair11. Friendship, Poetry, and Insurrection: The Kemble Letters, Marion Shaw12. Tennyson's Humour, Matthew Bevis13. Edward Lear and Tennyson's Nonsense, Richard Cronin14. 'Men, my borther, men the workers': Tennyson and the Victorian Working-CLass Poet, Kirstie Blair15. 'Frater, ave'? Tennyson and Swinburne, Linda K. Hughes16. After Tennyson: the Presence of the Poet, 1892-1918, Samantha Matthews17. Tennyson, by Ear, Angela Leighton18. Hardy's Tennyson, Helen Small19. T. S. Eliot and Tennyson, John Morton20. Tennyson and Auden, John Fuller21. Betjemen's Tennyson, Seamus PerryIndex

Editorial Reviews

"The essays are uniformly strong and collectively add to the understanding of an important poet who has, at times, been undervalued in recent years." —Choice

From the Publisher