This document provides an introduction to Victorian poets Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning. It summarizes Tennyson's life, works, and style which expressed the doubts and faith of his era. His most famous works included In Memoriam and Idylls of the King. The document also outlines Browning's more obscure style and his works across his career such as Dramatic Lyrics and Men and Women which analyzed the human condition through various characters. In conclusion, it contrasts Tennyson and Browning's approaches with Tennyson prioritizing artistic form and Browning focusing more on the message.
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Victorian Poet: Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning
1. Name : Jitendra Sumra
Victorian Poets
Sem : 02c
Year : 2011-12
Roll No - 17
Paper : Victorian Literature
Department Of English
Bhavnagar University
2. 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…
3. • 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…
4. 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…
5. • 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…
6. • 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…
7. • 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…
8. • 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…
9. 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…
10. • 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…
11. • 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…
12. • 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…
13. 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.
14. 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’
15. 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)
16. Second Period(1841-1846)
o Bells and Pomegranits series
o Pippas Passes
o Colombes Birthday
o In Balcony(1855)
o The Ring(1868)
Third Period:
o Five at the fair
o Red cotton night
o The inn album
o Jocoseria
17. 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.