ENH222 Survey of English Literature After 1800

LESSON TEN

ASSIGNMENTS

Read:

the following "Lecture" on Tennyson, Eliot, Bronte, Arnold, Light Verse, and Lewis

Carroll

pp. 1198-1202; 1204-1208; 1213-1214; 1280-1282, on Alfred, Lord Tennyson

pp. 1454-1461, on George Eliot

pp. 1418-1425, on Emily Bronte

pp. 1471-1475; 1478-1482; 1492; 1528-1532, on Matthew Arnold

pp. 1662-1674, on Lewis Carroll, Light Verse, and Edward Lear

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Answers to Lesson Ten Study Questions

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON, GEORGE ELIOT, EMILY BRONTE,

MATTHEW ARNOLD, LIGHT VERSE: LEWIS CARROLL, EDWARD LEAR

This next group of authors exemplifies the diversity of literature being written during the nineteenth century. Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Matthew Arnold tended to be rather somber, serious poets; George Eliot wrote to initiate social reform and to teach lessons; Emily Bronte was a mystic who lived almost independently of the outside world and who wrote very gentle but dramatic poetry; and Lewis Carroll focused his attention on light verse and children's stories.

Take a moment and think about the Romantic poets you have studied. How do you think they are different from this group? What unified the Romantics? Do you see anything in the previous paragraph that might be a unifying factor, a common thread, for this group?

Again, the one thing that is so outstanding about these 1800s authors is their diversity, a diversity of this magnitude not seen before. When you read these authors' works, try to appreciate their contributions to so many different types and styles of writing.

INSTRUCTION:

As in previous lessons, you will study each author separately. Because Tennyson is a major poet, meaning he exerted tremendous influence on literature during this time period, this lesson devotes more attention to him than some of the other authors.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

It is truly amazing what Tennyson accomplished considering his family background and his personal problems. The entire family, including his clergyman father, was plagued by manic depression, and three brothers were committed to insane asylums. Tennyson was a slow, ponderous, brooding man who looked much like one of the three musketeers.

Tennyson was by far the most successful Victorian poet, which is not surprising because he was England's poet laureate for 42 years. He had a classical education at Cambridge and was influenced by Byron and Shelley to some extent and by Keats rather profoundly. There are grounds for comparison in their uses of imagery, among other things. While Tennyson was at Cambridge, he started thinking about writing an allegory about King Arthur, who would represent religious faith, and the Round Table, which would represent religious institutions. This later led to the classic, Idylls of the King.

Also, while at Cambridge, he met a man named Arthur Hallam, and they became fast friends. They traveled to Spain together, Hallam became engaged to Tennyson's sister, and the following two years were a time of immense growth for both young men. It was during this time that Tennyson started experimenting with the dramatic monologue. Hallam is worthy of note because of the impact he had on young Tennyson's life. A series of disasters occurred in 1833, one of which was Hallam's death at age 24. At this same time, Tennyson was showing early symptoms of failing eyesight, and his family was turned out of the rectory where they lived. As if this were not enough, critics were attacking his poetry. He had just become engaged, but his tenuous circumstances put marriage out of the question at that time. By 1835, Tennyson had finally begun coping with Hallam's death and wrote "Ulysses," a dramatic monologue and one of his most famous pieces. By 1842, he had gained some recognition and started to refine his work. This was the year he wrote his first poem of social protest, "Locksley Hall." In 1847, he wrote "The Princess" which voiced support of female education. In 1853, he wrote "Maud", a monodrama, which is an extension of the dramatic monologue, only the story unfolds through a series of episodes and soliloquies. It wasn't until 1859 that his "Idylls of the King" appeared.

As you read his work, notice that he writes about the past. Your text states that "he was haunted by" what he called "the passion of the past." Also notice the lack of reference to his own life. Tennyson thought poets should put none of their own personal lives into their poetry. Tennyson is considered among the great English poets because of his meditative poems, some of the episodes in "Idylls of the King"; "Maud" for its mastery and range of prosody; and "In Memoriam" in which faith and doubt battle for the possession of a soul. These are among his best works.

Read "The Lady of Shalott." Why is her life so dreary? What do you think is the significance of the "mirror clear" where "Shadows of the world appear/,There she sees the highway near"? What is her curse? How overwhelming do you think it would be for

a young woman to observe people coming and going, including handsome young men, yet never experience life herself?

As you read "Ulysses" notice the language the main character uses to describe his wife. He says he is "Matched with an aged wife." Why is this ironic? How old do you think Ulysses is? When he says, "I mete and dole/Unequal laws unto a savage race," what does this tell you about his feelings about his subjects? You will probably have one of two views of Ulysses: a noble, grand man who is recalling his past adventures and uses these past successes to justify his refusal to submit graciously to old age and eventually death, or a bombastic arrogant old man contemptuous of his family and subjects? Notice that starting on line 14, when he addresses his sailors, that his descriptions of the sights and sounds of the port are very specific. Also note words and phrases such as the "deep moans," "death," "old age," and "the long day wanes." We get the impression this will be his last voyage. Ulysses, himself, typifies a new spirit of the Victorian Age. He is an explorer who searches for a new world and new experiences.

The last poem, "The Charge of the Light Brigade" is unique in English literature. Very few poems in English history celebrate war, except for old, heroic epics in earliest English literature, and generally those ended in a disaster. Tennyson's poem tells how three-fourths of the Light Brigade 600 died in this Crimean War battle that took place because of a blunder in orders.

Tennyson was truly a solitary and gloomy soul and much of his poetry reflected his life. At the same time, he was also the most successful and "the greatest of the Victorian poets" (Abrams 1052).

George Eliot

George Eliot is the pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans, a translator and novelist. She was the daughter of a Warwickshire land agent, a man of strong evangelical feelings. Eliot was stubborn and rebellious and disassociated herself from her father's religion which created great conflict for her and great distress for him. One interesting thing about this novelist, which we remember her as, is that she did not start to write until she was 38 years old. She started writing short stories and then moved on to novels. Silas Marner is perhaps her most famous novel; her best work also included Felix Holt, The Radical, and Middlemarch.

Her fiction included serious discussions of the social and moral problems of her time, but the truly original characteristic of her work was that she delved into and provided reasons for the choices her characters made in their journey to an individual and mature life. For example, in the novel, The Mill on the Floss, Maggie agonizes over prevalent provincial attitudes about women's positions in society, education, and money, and the reader learns through dialogue of her inner struggle toward independence.

Two beliefs Eliot held about writing were that the novel should not be primarily for entertainment but for the serious discussion of moral and social issues, and that the novel should teach. In fact, she thought that teaching was the overwhelmingly important reason to write.

She wrote mostly about peasants and townspeople, and most of her concern was for these groups. Unlike most other authors of her time, she concentrated her attention on the main character in the story. This main character is often an unattractive person who is living a futile life. Each novel includes a moral clash stemming from the dilemma of a woman having to choose between two men, or a man having to choose between two women. Eliot firmly believed in free will and that the moral choices we make are critical.

She also believed that moral disintegration is caused by actions committed for selfish reasons. On the flip side, she believed that moral regeneration is accomplished by selfless acts of love and random acts of kindness.

By this time, you may have wondered why she used a pen name. Do you think a woman's words would have been read seriously by the public or the critics in the 1800s?

As you read Margaret Fuller and Mary Wollstonecraft, notice the similarities among these women’s ideas. Notice where they differ. George Eliot judges the validity of these two womens' assertions. She makes a reference to Margaret Fuller and "some of the best things she says." Eliot says women have "airs because her culture was shallow or unreal." She also says, "Men pay a heavy price for their reluctance to encourage self-help and independent resources in women."

Eliot was one of the pioneers who took Wollstonecraft's and Fuller's ideas and kept them alive.

Emily Bronte

The Bronte sisters – and it is difficult to discuss one without the others – led rather odd lives. Their father, the Reverend Patrick Bronte, was an Irishman married to a woman from Cornwall. The pair had six children, five girls and one boy, Patrick, who grew up to be an alcoholic. The mother died when Emily was two years old. In 1821, Emily and all her sisters except one were sent to a school for poor clergymen's children, and the two oldest children died there. Charlotte and Emily were brought home and were tutored by their father in a rather hit or miss fashion. Mostly, they were allowed to roam freely and play in the church graveyard next to the rectory where they lived.

The amazing thing about the work these two women produced was that they experienced none of the adventures and loves about which they wrote. Emily's genius was in her dramatic poetry. She is often credited with developing a demon lover who has many of the personal qualities of Lord Byron, and there are Byronic and occult elements in Emily's poetry.

The origins of Emily's and Charlotte's genius have been traced to their Celtic background, their association with their alcoholic brother, and the reading of Methodist magazines. In other words, no one really knows.

Some of the elements of genius are found in Emily Bronte's "Remembrance", a woman's lament over the death of her lover/hero. She asks his forgiveness if she forgets him but also says she will never be happy again. However, she goes on to say that she can cherish life even if there is no joy. Survival is possible only if she does "not indulge in Memory's rapturous pain." She cannot sit and think about him, for the pain is too great. Her world is empty without him.

As you read Emily Bronte's poetry, can you find lines that indicate her leanings toward the "mystical?"

Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold, a critic and a poet, writes about the spiritual void of modern life and the plight of the Victorians caught between "two worlds, one dead/The other powerless to be born." He mourns the loss of faith in the world. He write about social and moral issues, including the need to establish a good system of education for the middle classes.

On a personal level, he writes about his own loneliness and isolation. So, Arnold is not a writer who celebrates life and joy, but he does discuss poetry in terms that come close. In "Maurice de Guerin", he says that poetry has "the power of so dealing with things as to awaken in us a wonderfully full, new, and intimate sense of them and of our relations with them and to awaken it is one of the highest powers of poetry."

So, Arnold says that man can avoid a spiritual void by allowing poetry to "illuminate man; it gives him a satisfying sense of reality; it reconciles him with himself and the universe." Can you understand why critics have said that his poetry mourns the loss of faith in the world? What are some specific phrases that illustrate this?

As you read "Dover Beach," Arnold's best known poem, how can you apply the ideas of "loss of faith" and the need for integrity to the other works you have read? Which lines show his concern for a loss of religious faith?

In "Culture and Anarchy", what does Arnold say about men of "culture and poetry" and the way they felt about Puritans? To what does the phrase "sweetness and light refer?

Lewis Carroll

Light Verse

Before we discuss Lewis Carroll, it might be helpful to have some background information on light verse: the different types, and how and why it originated.

First, there are two basic varieties of light verse: nonsense writing and writing that mocked institutions and marriage. Edward Lear's and Lewis Carroll's nonsense writing included some rather zany word puzzles. Most nonsense writing was for children. This is not an entirely new form of writing; it was occasionally used by Shakespeare, James Joyce, and James Thurber. Nonsense writing is exactly that, nonsense but fun. The other type of light verse, which was used in W. S. Gilbert's burlesque and found in articles in Punch magazine, ridiculed government, politicians, employers, marriage, and anything else that could be made fun of.

Not much literature had been written for children until the eighteenth century.

Children's literature included fairy tales and nursery rhymes.

The focus of children and animals in literature can be attributed to the development of new attitudes toward them. The idea that children enjoy a spontaneity of feeling and freedom from grown-up self-consciousness is a legacy of the Romantic poets, especially Wordsworth. Do you remember one of Wordsworth's themes of the child's "visionary gleam?" Dickens writes about poor little street urchins, such as in Oliver Twist, and the trouble small children have growing up in bad circumstances. Blake writes about children in "The Chimney Sweeper" and Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. But notice the difference in focus between Dickens and Blake and then Carroll's nonsense writing. Dickens and Blake were concerned about the plight of these children and the lack of protection for them. In other words, they were working for social reforms. Nonsense writing is written just for children to enjoy, to let their imaginations soar, to revel in the fun of it.

____________________

Lewis Carroll is the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, an author, mathematician, and photographer. In fact, he was one of the pioneers of portrait photography. Even though he lectured in mathematics at Christ Church, Oxford, he was shy, he stammered, and he was a boring lecturer. He was ordained as a deacon, but he never preached. However, he was good at portrait photography, and his enthusiasm was for little girls for whom he also created funny games and puzzles. He wrote Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass for Alice Liddell, one of his little friends. These two works are the best examples of the Victorian love of nonsense.

One good example of the nonsense of the writing can be found in "Humpty Dumpty's Explication of 'Jabberwocky'" from Through the Looking Glass. According to Humpty Dumpty, at four o'clock in the afternoon, the lithe and slimy animals (something like badgers, something like lizards, and something like corkscrews) go round and round like gyroscopes and make holes in the ground. This is not something you try to figure out; just sit back and enjoy the wild images.

"Jabberwocky" is really a word puzzle in which the author lets readers fill in their own mental images of the creature by using nonsense words instead of descriptive ones.

What does the Jabberwock look like? What is a Jubjub bird? Why should the young man avoid/beware the Jabberwock, the Jubjub bird, and the Bandersnatch? Notice who the hero is. It's not the father. It's the child.

"Jabberwocky" shows that we can understand poetry to some extent without knowing the meaning of all the words; we can still get the idea. Notice also that Carroll depends on the suggestions that sounds make for meaning. Even more importantly, he pays careful attention to syntax, how words are put together in the sentences, so the reader knows what kind of word should go where the nonsense word is. He also uses key words, such as "sword," "dead," "through and through," to give the reader the basic idea of what is happening.

So how does one make a nonsense word? Carroll took two or more words and combined pieces of them to make a new word. For example,

slithy = slippery + slitherly + lively + lithe

tove = toads + doves

gimble = gambol + nimble

manxome = maximum + noxious + fearsome

galumphing = galloping + lumbering + lump

chortle = chuckle + snort

Chortle has become a standard English word.

In "The Hunting of the Snark", a baker faints, is revived, and is asked to tell his story of woe. After the baker informs his uncle that he is going to sea to hunt snark, his uncle tells him to beware of one species of snark called the Boojum because if the baker catches one, he will vanish forever. After that the baker has nightmares about the Boojum. In the end, he does catch one. What happens to him? Were his fears well-founded?

The "White Knight's Song" is a parody, which is a literary or musical work in which the style of an author or work is closely imitated for comic effect or ridicule. What do you think is being ridiculed in this piece?

In summary, these authors represent the diversity of the Victorian Age and the extent to which all kinds of writing was acceptable and even encouraged in the 1800s.

Lesson Ten Study Questions

1. Tennyson was one of the first poets to experiment with what form of poetry?

2. How did scientific knowledge affect Tennyson's poetry?

3. Describe Ulysses. List some of his character traits.

4. What are some characteristics of Emily Bronte's characters in her poems?

5. What has the heroine's life been like since the death of her hero and her love

in "Remembrance?"

6. Why is George Eliot considered "perhaps, the greatest English realist?"

7. How are Margaret Fuller's and Mary Wollstonecraft's views of women similar?

different?

8. What is the recurring topic of Matthew Arnold's poetry and prose?

9. What did Arnold consider the greatest social need of his time?

10. What did Arnold consider the product of good literary criticism?

11. In "Culture and Anarchy", what did Arnold see as the main problem with

Puritanism?

12. What are the two kinds of light verse?

13. What other authors whom we have studied wrote about children? How is

their work different from Carroll's?

14. How does Humpty Dumpty define "outgrabe" or "outgribing?"

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