Victorian Poet: Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning

Victorian PoetsName : Jitendra Sumra

Sem : 02c

Year : 2011-12

Roll No - 17

Paper : Victorian Literature

Department Of English

Bhavnagar University

Introduction • The Victorian age is especially remarkable because

of its rapid progress in all the arts and science and in Mechanical inventions.

• Victorian as is also known for the age of the Newspapers, the Magazine, and the modern novel.

• The first two being the story of the worlds daily life and the last our pleasantest form of literary entertainment as well as our most successful method of presenting modern problems and modern ideas.

• Cont…

• Victorian age is emphatically an age of realism rather than of romance not the realism of Zola and Ibson but a deeper realism which strives to tell the whole truth, showing moral and physical diseases as they are , but holding up health and hope as the normal condition of humanity. The two main poet are Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning.

• Cont…

Alfred Tennyson •His Life • Tennyson was born in the Rectory of Somersby,

Lincolnshire, in 1809. He was one of the twelve children’s of the Rue. George Clayton Tennyson, a Scholarly clergyman, and his wife Elizabeth fitches a gentle, lovable women.

• Tennyson wrote with his Brothers and first efforts appeared in a little volume called “ Poems by two Brothers” in 1827.

• Cont…

• Among its treasures are still read with delight [1] The Lotus,• [2] Palace of art,• [3] A dream of fair women,• [4] The millers daughters, and • [5] The Lady of Shallot.• Tennyson was plunged into a period of gloom and sorrow.

The sorrow may be read in the exquisite little poem beginning “Break ,break, break, on thy cold gray stones , o sea!”

• Which was his first published Elegy for his friend.• Cont…

• Tennyson's life is a remarkable one in this respect, that from beginning to end he seems to have been dominated by a single impulse, the impulse of poetry.

• Tennyson was naturally shy, retiring, indifferent to men , hating noise and publicity, loving to be alone with nature.

• cont…

• Tennyson was not only a man and a poet , he was a voice, the voice of a whole people , expressing in exquisite melody their doubts and their faith, their grief's and their triumphs.

• In the wonderful variety of his verse he suggests all the qualities of England's greed's poets the dreaminess of spenser. The majesty of Milton, Wordsworth, the fantasy of Black and Coleridge ,the Melody of Keats , and Shelly. The narrative vigor of Scott and Byron.

• All these striking qualities are evident on successive pages of Tennyson's poetry.

• Cont…

• Tennyson's Immature work, like that of the minor poets, is sometimes in a doubtful of despairing strain but his in memoriam is like the rainbow after storm, and Browning seems better to express the spirit of his age in the strong manly faith of “ Rabbi Ben Ezra”. And in the courageous optimism of all his poetry.

• Cont…

His Works

• Tennyson's Works it may be well to record two things, by way to suggestion ,

• First , Tennyson's poetry is not so much to be studied as to be read and appreciated; he is a poet to have open on ones table , and to enjoy ‘ as one enjoys his daily exercise. And

• Second we should by all means begins to get acquainted , with Tennyson in get days of our youth.

• Cont…

• Tennyson had publishing poetry .since 1827, his first poems appearing almost simultaneously with the last work of Byron, Shelly and Keats.

• In 1842- The Princes and Maud,• In 1847- The Princess, a medley, [ A long poem of over there

thousand lines of blank verse.]• “Tears, Idle, tears” , “Bugle song” and “ sweet and law”.• In 1855- Maud ; this is called in literature a monodrama, telling

the story of a lover who passes from morridness to ecstasy , then to anger and murder, followed by insanity and recovery.

• Cont…

• The most loved of all Tennyson's works is “in Memoriam”.

• “The Idylls of the king” is among the greatest of Tennyson’s later works.

• His another collection of poems called “English Idylls” in 1842, In this collection there [1] Dora, [2] The Gardeners Daughter, [3] Ulysses , [4] Locksley and [5] Sir Galahad. One of the most famous of this series is “Enoch Arden” [1864].

• Cont…

• Tennyson's later volumes, like the “Ballads” [1864] and “Demeter” [1880]

• Other poems like “The change of the light Brigade”

• “wages “ and “The Higher pantheism”.• Cont…

Robert Browning (1812 – 1889)

We find that it has many sources:

i. The poet’s thought is often obscure or else so extremely subtle that language expresses it imperfectly.

Ii Browning is led from one thing to another by his own mental associations and forgets that readers associations may be an entirely different kind.

Iii Browning is careless in his English and frequently clips in his speech, giving us a series of ejaculation.

He does not like so many other an entertaining poet, one cannot read him after dinner or whom settled in a comfortable easy-chair, one must sit up and think and be alert when he reads Browning.

His Life:He was birn in Camberwell, on the outskirts of London, in 1882, from his first home and from his first school, at Packhome, he could see London.

Like Tennyson this boy found his work very early, and for fifty years hardly a week passed that he did not write poetry. He began at prodycee verse.

His first known work, Pauline(1833)

Two years later appeared, ‘Paracelsus’ and than his tragedy straffored was put upon the stage

Browning’s symbolic name for ‘Poetry and thought’ or ‘Singing and sermonizing’

Cont…

His Works: Drametic Lyric(1842) Drametic Romances and lyrics(1845) Man and Women(1855) Drametic Persones(1864)

His range is enormous and brings all sorts and conditions of man under analysis. The musician in ‘Abt Vogler’, the artist in ‘Andrea del sarto’ , the early christian in ‘A death in the desert’.

All these and a hundred more histories of the soul show Browning’s marvelous versatility.

Periods of his works:

First period(1841-1868)o Pauline (1833)o Paracelsus(1835)o Sordello(1840)

Second Period(1841-1846)o Bells and Pomegranits serieso Pippas Passes o Colombes Birthdayo In Balcony(1855)o The Ring(1868)

Third Period:o Five at the fairo Red cotton nighto The inn albumo Jocoseria

Conclusion: In the end we can say that Browning’s place in our literature will be better appreciated by comparison with his friend Tennyson. Whom we just studied in one respect, especially in their methods of approaching the truth, the two man are the exact opposites Tennyson is the first artist and than the teacher, but with Browning the message is always the important thing, and he is careless, too careless, of the form in which it is expressed.