Unit 6-Victorianism

Course Title: Poetry
Course Code & NO.: LANE 447
Course Credit Hrs.: 3 weekly
Level: 7th Level Students

Victorianism
Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “Ulysses”
Emily Dickinson’s “A Bird Came Down the
Walk”
Thomas Hardy’s “The Darkling Thrush”
Instructor: Dr. Noora Al-Malki
Credits of images and online content are to their original owners.

This Presentation
• Discusses characteristics of Victorian poetry.
• Presents a survey of the poetry written by
some of the major Victorian poets (British &
American) of the 19th C.
• Focuses on the presentation of themes
related philosophical/psychological
representation of human nature and nature.

Dr. Noora Al-Malki 2012
2
eaglenoora@yahoo.com

Victorianism
1830-1900

3

Victorianism
1830-1900

•rapid and unpredictable change (progress)
•economies of Europe expanded and accelerated
•emergence of “middle class,”
•scientific advancements vs. church law
•poverty (working classes)
•women had no rights

http://www.english.uwosh.edu/roth/VictorianEngland.htm
http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/victorian/welcome.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_era

4

Victorianism
1830-1900

5

Victorian Poetry
1830-1900

Romantic poetry Victorian poetry
Escapist – Abstract realistic & down to earth
Interest in nature & imagination utilitarian (practical)

Subject matter: personal – Subject matter: social
expression of inner emotions
Style: simplicity of languages, Style: inventiveness and
clarity of images experimentation with different
styles to achieve psychological
realism
http://www.bachelorandmaster.com/literaryterms/victorian-
poetry.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_literature

6

Victorian Poets
1830-1900

Alfred Lord Tennyson
- Simple economy of verse
- reclaimed the past

Thomas Hardy (basically novelist)
- key forerunner of the Modernist Movement in literature
- created desolate, hopeless worlds where life had very little
meaning
- questioned the relevance of modern institutions, in particular
organized religion
- unusual use of language

Robert and Elizabeth Browning (a couple)

Emily Dickinson (American Romantic)
7

Lord Tennyson (1892–1809)

8

Ulysses

9

Ulysses
First true Dramatic Monologue addressed to an unknown
audience

Dramatic monologues are a way of expressing the views of a
character and offering the audience greater insight into that
character's feelings.

Origins: Greek (Homer’s Iliad & Odyssey)
Italian (Dante’s Inferno)

Subject: Ulysses (The Greek Odysseus) desire to roam the world
and not be put down by his old age. It represents the chivalourous
spirit.
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield".

10

Ulysses
Ulysses

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known,-- cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
11

Ulysses

Myself not least, but honor'd of them all,--
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
>From that eternal silence, something more,

12

Ulysses

A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
to whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,--
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
13

Ulysses

Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me,--
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads,-- you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;

14

Ulysses
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,--
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
15

Ulysses
1- Trace the representation of the hero in Tennyson’s
“Ulysses”. Take note of how the form (Dramatic monologue)
helps in uncovering such representation.

2- Write a short note on how “Ulysses” perceives his family.

16

Emily Dickinson
(1830–1886)
-one of the most original 19th Century American
poets
-She used unconventional broken rhyming meter
- She had a peculiar way of using dashes and
random capitalization
- creative use of metaphor

This Is My Letter To The World
This is my letter to the world,
That never wrote to me,--
The simple news that Nature told,
With tender majesty.
Her message is committed
To hands I cannot see;
For love of her, sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me!
17

In the Garden

A bird came down the walk:
He did not know I saw;
He bit an angle-worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw.

And then he drank a dew
From a convenient grass,
And then hopped sidewise to the wall
To let a beetle pass.

He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all abroad,--
They looked like frightened beads, I thought;
He stirred his velvet head

18

In the Garden
Like one in danger; cautious,
I offered him a crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home

Than oars divide the ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or butterflies, off banks of noon,
Leap, plashless, as they swim.

19

In the Garden
Explication
"bizarre little narrative"

This is the finest example of Dickinson’s nature verse, for it
perfectly juxtaposes elements of superficial gentility against the
inner barbarity that characterizes the workings of the world. The
narrator chances to see a bird walking along a pathway, but just
as the scene appears perfect, the bird seizes upon a worm,
bites it in two, and devours it. The bird drinks some dew on
nearby grass (note the alternate for a drinking “glass”), then
graciously steps aside, right to a wall, to allow a beetle to pass.

20

In the Garden
Explication
The bird, like one fearful of being caught in an unacceptable
action, glances around quickly with darting eyes.
“Cautious” describes both the demeanor of the bird and that of
the observing narrator. Both feel threatened, the bird of the
possible consequences of its savagery, the narrator because
she is next on the bird’s path. She “offered him a Crumb,” not
because she admires the bird but out of fear and expediency.
The bird, sensing that it has escaped any potentially harmful
consequences for what it has done, struts a bit as “he unrolled
his feathers” and “rowed him softer home—.” Ironically, its walk
is too casual, softer than oars dividing a seamless ocean or
butterflies leaping into noon’s banks, all without a splash.
Behind its soft, charming, and genteel facade, nature is
menacing, and its hypocritical attempts to conceal its barbarism
make it more frightening.
http://salempress.com/store/pdfs/dickinson.pdf
21

Thomas Hardy
1840-1928

-Novelist & poet
- ironic poems
- nature as setting and as inspiration for
poetry

22

Darkling Thrush
I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.
23

Darkling Thrush
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware. Dr. Noora Al-Malki 2012
24

Darkling Thrush
- "The Darkling Thrush" was originally called "The Century's
End, 1900” because it was written on the Eve of the 20th C.

-It describes an encounter with a frail bird which sings and
awakens the speaker to new possibilities.

-Apparently, the speaker is an aged and tired persona.

-The setting of the poem during winter also testifies to the old,
dying age.

- Thematically, the poem explores the signs of progress into the
20th C which were frightening as well as promising for Hardy.

25

“In the Garden” VS. “The Darkling Thrush”

Compare and contrast the representation of nature in
Dickinson’s “In the Garden” and Hardy’s “The Darkling
Thrush”

26

Unit 6-Victorianism

More Related Content

What's hot

Viewers also liked

Similar to Unit 6-Victorianism

More from King AbdulAziz University

Recently uploaded

Unit 6-Victorianism