Tennyson Among the Poets

Bicentenary Essays

Edited by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst and Seamus Perry

A unique celebration of the leading Victorian poet in his bicentenary year
Original essays from the world's leading Tennyson scholars
Covers a wide range of authors (in addition to Tennyson) and literary topics

Tennyson Among the Poets

Bicentenary Essays

Edited by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst and Seamus Perry

Description

Published to mark the bicentenary of Alfred Tennyson's birth, these essays offer an important revaluation of his achievement and its lasting importance. After several years in which the temper of criticism has been largely political (and often hostile towards Tennyson in particular) a number of influential recent accounts of Victorian poetry have rediscovered the virtues of a closer style of reading and the benefits and pleasures of an approach that, without at all ignoring social and cultural contexts, approaches them through a primary alertness to textual detail and literary history. This volume, including entirely commissioned work by a wide range of critics and scholars from across the profession in both Britain and North America, seeks to bring such forms of attention to bear on the immense variety of Tennyson's career by exploring the complex and multiple connections between Tennyson and other writers - his predecessors, his contemporaries, and his successors. Collectively, the essays describe an intricate network of affiliation and indebtedness, resistance and reconciliation. They provide a unique assessment of Tennyson's origins, work, and imaginative legacy as he enters upon his third century.

Tennyson Among the Poets

Bicentenary Essays

Edited by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst and Seamus Perry

Acknowledgments
Notes on Contributors
A Note on the Texts and Abbreviations
Prefatory Note, Christopher Ricks
1. Tennyson's Dying Fall, Peter McDonald
2. Tennyson's Retrospective View, Dinah Birch
3. Tennyson's Limitations, Christopher Decker
4. Tennyson's Grotesque, Aidan Day
5. Tennyson, Browning, Virgil, Daniel Karlin
6. Tennyson and the Voices of Ovid's Heroines, A. A. Markley
7. On lines and grooves from Shakespeare to Tennyson, Eric Griffiths
8. Epic Sensibilities: 'Old Man' Milton and the Making of Tennyson's Idylls of the King, N. K. Sugimura
9. The Wheels of Being: Tennyson and Shelley, Michael O'Neill
10. 'Brother-poets': Tennyson and Browning, Donald S. Hair
11. Friendship, Poetry, and Insurrection: The Kemble Letters, Marion Shaw
12. Tennyson's Humour, Matthew Bevis
13. Edward Lear and Tennyson's Nonsense, Richard Cronin
14. 'Men, my borther, men the workers': Tennyson and the Victorian Working-CLass Poet, Kirstie Blair
15. 'Frater, ave'? Tennyson and Swinburne, Linda K. Hughes
16. After Tennyson: the Presence of the Poet, 1892-1918, Samantha Matthews
17. Tennyson, by Ear, Angela Leighton
18. Hardy's Tennyson, Helen Small
19. T. S. Eliot and Tennyson, John Morton
20. Tennyson and Auden, John Fuller
21. Betjemen's Tennyson, Seamus Perry
Index

Tennyson Among the Poets

Bicentenary Essays

Edited by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst and Seamus Perry

Author Information

Contributors:

Matthew Bevis, University of York
Dinah Birch, Liverpool University
Kirstie Blair, University of Glasgow
Richard Cronin, University of Glasgow
Aidan Day, University of Dundee
Christopher Decker, University of Nevada
Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, Magdalen College, Oxford
John Fuller, Magdalen College, Oxford
Eric Griffiths, Trinity College, Cambridge
Donald S. Hair, University of Western Ontario
Linda K. Hughes, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth
Daniel Karlin, University of Sheffield
Angela Leighton, Trinity College, Cambridge
Peter McDonald, Christ Church, Oxford
A. A. Markley, Penn State University
Samantha Matthews, University of Sheffield
John Morton, University of Greenwich
Michael O'Neill, Durham University
Seamus Perry, Balliol College, Oxford
Marion Shaw, Loughborough University
Helen Small, Pembroke College, Oxford
N.K. Sugimura, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge

Tennyson Among the Poets

Bicentenary Essays

Edited by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst and Seamus Perry

Reviews and Awards

"The essays are uniformly strong and collectively add to the understanding of an important poet who has, at times, been undervalued in recent years." --Choice