This document provides an overview of Victorian poets Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, and Matthew Arnold. It discusses their backgrounds, major works, and poetic forms. It analyzes Tennyson's long poem "In Memoriam A.H.H." which mourned the loss of his friend Arthur Hallam and explored grief, faith, and homoerotic love. It also examines Browning's dramatic monologue "My Last Duchess" told from the perspective of a manipulative Duke, and Arnold's dramatic lyric "Dover Beach" which reflected on loss of faith. The document promotes considering these poems through queer readings that acknowledge Victorian anxieties around same-sex affection.

1. ELIT 46C
Day 9
VICTORIAN POETRY:
ARNOLD, BROWNING, TENNYSON… AND ALL THE REST.

2. First meeting of De Anza’s
Sexuality and Gender Alliance
Thurs, 5/10, 3:30, in MLC 250.

3. Business / Participation
Midterm next Thursday (see the Midterm
assignment on Canvas for details).
Read Jekyll & Hyde for Thursday please!
Participation for today:
◦ One individual point.
◦ Two extra points if you didn’t say anything in our
full discussion last Thursday!
◦ One point for the one person who connects the
song before class to today’s lecture.

4. Which do you prefer:
poetry or prose? Why?

5. Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
Middle class, father in the church
Cambridge, joined secret society where he met
Arthur Hallam; Hallam engaged to AT’s sister.
1833: Arthur dies of sudden stroke in Prague.
1842 poetry collection was immediately popular.
1850: In Memoriam A.H.H.
1850: appointed Poet Laureate (until his death).
Queen Victoria loved In Memoriam A.H.H.
◦ Married longtime girlfriend.
Became baron in 1884.
Buried in Poet’s Corner, Westminster Abbey.

6. Robert Browning (1812-1889)
Solidly middle class; father a bank clerk.
Tutored well at home; could not go to Oxbridge
because of parents’ religious beliefs.
1846: married semi-invalid (spinal injury, opium
dependent) Elizabeth Barrett, eloped to Italy.
◦ She was a major poet of the era—more well-known
and respected than he was.
1855: Men and Women, later recognized to be a
great work.
1861: EBB dies in Florence.
1868: The Ring and the Book: long poem about
old murder case. Won his full recognition.
Buried in Poet’s Corner.

7. Lyric Form
“Dover Beach”
By Matthew Arnold
The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Two different ways of
imagining other people.
QUESTIONS to consider:
Who is the poetic speaker here?
Who is the “I”?
What is the situation of this
poem?
What is our relation to the
poem and the poetic speaker?

8. Lyric Form
“Dover Beach”
By Matthew Arnold
The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s
shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and
flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Two different ways of
imagining other people.
QUESTIONS to consider:
Who is the poetic speaker here?
Who is the “I”?
What is the situation of this poem?
What is our relation to the poem
and the poetic speaker?
--inhabit their consciousness
--experience their experience in the
present
--sympathy
This is what Ralph W. Rader has
called
dramatic lyric
An “I” speaking about a specific
event that we then participate in.

9. FERRARA
That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said
“Fra Pandolf” by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’twas not
Her husband’s presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek; perhaps
Fra Pandolf chanced to say, “Her mantle laps
Over my lady’s wrist too much,” or “Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat.” Such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart—how shall I say?— too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, ’twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace—all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men—good! but thanked
Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech—which I have not—to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, “Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark”—and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse—
E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master’s known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretense
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

10. Browning: “My Last Duchess”
Who is the poetic speaker here?
What is the situation of this poem?
What is our relation to the poem and the
poetic speaker?
Form: dramatic monologue.
Robert Langbaum: reader’s attitude is
“sympathy and judgment”
Rader: “we become them (sympathy), while
remaining ourselves (judgment).”
Rader: difference in “cinematic images” we
experience in our heads when we read each
poem:
◦ dramatic monologue: specific scene with the
Duke in a time and place.
◦ dramatic lyric: we do NOT see the poetic speaker
in our head; rather, we see through their eyes.
Not the actual
duchess.

11. Judgment
What does it mean that we can experience
“judgment” of the poetic speaker in a
dramatic monologue?
How does the Duke want us to see him?
How do we see him?
What does his story tell the messenger? Why
is this happening? What is the Duke’s
intention?
Invites a suspicious reading:
◦ is the Duke careless? Is he telling us more than
he intends?
◦ is the Duke mad? Is he in control of what he is
telling us?
◦ is the Duke calculating? If so, how? Why?

12. In Memoriam A.H.H., Tennyson
Form?
Rhyme scheme?
Narrative of loss—more specifically, multiple types of loss.
1. loss of best friend: deep grief (like in the Christmas passages) to
eventual acceptance (in 127-130).
2. potential loss of religious faith: see last two stanzas of Prologue.
Forgive my grief for one removed,
Thy creature, whom I found so fair.
I trust he lives in thee, and there
I find him worthier to be loved.
Forgive these wild and wandering cries,
Confusions of a wasted youth;
Forgive them where they fail in truth,
And in thy wisdom make me wise.
3. homoerotic love and loss

13. Towards a queer reading
What did you notice about the affection here and
how it was expressed?
Lyric 93: (Tennyson speaking to Hallam’s ghost)
Descend, and touch, and enter: hear
The wish too strong for words to name,
That in this blindness of the frame
My Ghost may feel that thine is near.
Contemporary readers also noticed this and were
occasionally uncomfortable:
◦ Ricks: “Some Victorians, who found Shakespeare’s
Sonnets troubling, found In Memoriam troubling.”
◦ The Times review was bothered by the poem’s “tone
of amatory tenderness. Surely this is a strange mode
of address to a man, even though he be dead.”
What does this reveal about Victorian anxieties?
1850: “Touch, and enter [me.]” (In Memoriam)
PROBLEM
1862: “Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices” (Goblin
Market)
NO PROBLEM!

14. Poetic speaker’s queer subject positions
(Furneaux)
Lyric 6:
O somewhere, meek, the unconscious dove,
That sittest ranging golden hair;
And glad to find thyself so fair,
Poor child, that waitest for thy love!
[…]
And even when she turned, the curse
Had fallen, and her future Lord
Was drowned in passing through the ford,
Or killed in falling from his horse.
O what to her shall be the end?
And what to me remains the good?
To her, perpetual maidenhood,
And unto me no second friend.
Lyric 8:
A happy lover who has come
To look on her that loves him well,
Who ‘lights and rings the gateway bell,
And learns her gone and far from home;
Lyric 9:
My Arthur, whom I shall not see
Till all my widowed race be run;
Dear as the mother to the son,
More than my brothers are to me.
Lyric 13
Tears of the widower, when he sees
A late-lost form that sleep reveals,
And moves his doubtful arms, and feels
Her place is empty, fall like these;
Who is the speaker comparing himself to in each of these stanzas?
What subject positions does he (implicitly or explicitly) adopt?

15. If you care about
English lit and/or
gays, you should
be following Jeff
Nunokawa on
Facebook.

16. Jeff Nunokawa and the homosexual “phase”
Lyric 59:
O Sorrow, wilt thou live with me
No casual mistress, but a wife,
My bosom friend and half of life;
As I confess it needs to be?
[…]
My centered passion cannot move,
Nor will it lessen from today;
But I’ll have leave at times to play
As with the creature of my love;
Nunokawa: Tennyson’s “heterosexual situation
is thus defined as the ghost of prior passion;
marriage is an elegy for earlier desire.”
In this way, boyhood homoeroticism is a type
of “phase” that eventually translates into
heterosexual marriage.
Part of English public school culture at this
time.
◦ 19C Etonian: “It’s all right for fellows to mess
one another a bit… But when we grow up we
put aside childish things, don’t we?”

17. Poetry Presentations

18. For Thursday
READ The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr.
Hyde! (Norton 1675-1719)
(Get at least halfway through.)
There is also a discussion post, of course.
Participation for today:
◦ One individual point.
◦ Two extra points if you didn’t say anything in our
full discussion last Thursday!
◦ One point for the one person who connects the
song before class to today’s lecture.