Victorian Poetry: Alfred Lord Tennyson and Alfred Lord Tennyson

1.      The rapid changes in the society due to industrialization

2.      The theory of evolution put forward by Charles Darwin

3.      And Marxism had shaken the faith of many people

4.      People have begun to question Christianity and their place in society

5.      In such a situation, poets reassured people by celebrating the developments of their age

6.      Celebrate the power, prosperity, and the industrial developments of the British empire  

Morte D’Arthur – Alfred Lord Tennyson

1.      The death of Arthur is from the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table

2.      Arthur had created Camelot out of wilderness

3.      Similarly, England had created a vast empire

4.      In the given section, King Arthur is mortally wounded and lay in the barge

5.      In the previous section Sir Bedivere asks if the “true old times are dead”

6.      Then the dying king comforts Sir Bedivere by saying that it was natural for things to change as it was the will of God

7.      In the Victorian Age society was undergoing a lot of changes

8.      The king urges the Knight to have faith in God and pray for him

9.      Arthur is going to go to Avalon – a place like Eden – where he would be healed of his wound and lead a happy life

10.  Sir Bedivere sees Arthur’s barge become a “black dot against the verge of dawn”    

Themes

·         Inevitability of change

·         Need to have faith

·         The good would be rewarded for their goodness in life after death

·         Britain would continue to flourish

Techniques 

·         Borrowings from the Arthurian legend

·         Formal language to match the elevated subject matter – “The old order changeth, yielding place to new”

Felix Randal – Gerald Manley Hopkins

1.      Felix Randal a man “who was big-boned and hardy handsome” had become ill

2.      Hopkins was the caregiver of Randal

3.      Both Hopkins and Randal forms a strong bond: “This seeing the sick endears them to us, us to it endears”

4.      At first Randal had complained about his fate

5.      Others comfort the dying man  by looking after him and performing rites

6.      But after receiving the Last Rites he had become resigned to his death

7.      Randal was a Farrier – a man who made shoes for horses

8.      Hopkins thinks of the fact that Randal’s body would be driven to its resting place by horses wearing the shoes he made  

Themes

·         Importance of faith

·         Importance of human community for comfort

Techniques

·         A sonnet

·         Creates ‘inscape’ – a strongly sensuous sense of colour, sounds, smell and touch in the objects he describes in his poems – through language