Alfred Tennyson - The Lady of Shalott: victorian era; isolation, man and nature, supernatural,

author and his work, art dies when released?

Robert Browning - My Last Duchess: duke of ferrara, wife, had her killed cuz she was too easily
pleased; power, madness, jealousy

Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights

Tennyson In memoriam

54: This canto is all about purpose. It is human nature to believe that everything is for the good,
and that everything has a purpose, down to even a worm being cut in half.

The speaker, though, laments that humans can never really know anything. We're just great big
babies who cry out in the night. We don't know who we are or what we are, and we don't even
have a way to express ourselves other than inarticulate bawling. Feel better about yourself yet?

55: The yearning that people have that the totality of humanity will have an afterlife comes from
the soul, which is like God.

Tennyson then questions if God and Nature (meaning the natural world...meaning science) are at
odds, because Nature doesn't seem particularly careful about life in general.

She's "careful of the type." If you're not sure what "type" means, it's scientific jargon that was
used during the Victorian period to signify "species." So, Nature is protective of species, but
couldn't care less about individuals from that species.

Tennyson highlights this by noting that out of fifty seeds, only one turns out to be a plant.

Those aren't very good odds, people.

Is it any wonder, then, that the speaker is now experiencing doubts? He's looking around the
world and seeing how cruel nature is, so now his doubts relating to faith are even worse.

He's now "falter[ing]" where once he strode confidently.

He describes his struggle as a groping through the darkness toward God. This is figurative—his
journey upon the "altar-stairs" is not meant to be a physical journey. It's just his journey back to
faith.

The "lame hands of faith" in the last stanza continue the helpless image of the inarticulate infant
from the previous canto.

At the end of this canto, the speaker seems to be a bit more secure in his faith. He's at least
starting to have some hope.

Did you notice how he's struggling with more cosmic issues relating to man's place in the natural
and spiritual worlds?

Maybe that shift that we noticed around Canto 50 is heading more in this direction. Onward to
find out…

56: Bingo—the cosmic struggle we noticed in the previous canto seems to be very much on the
agenda here.

Before, the speaker thought Nature was protective of whole species, but here he changes his
mind and thinks, "Silly me! She doesn't even care about that!"

He gets his evidence from "scarped cliff and quarried stone." (If you're thinking this sound an
awful lot like an archeological dig, you're right. Remember: Darwin's Theory of Evolution and
other scientific discoveries are on people's radar during the Victorian period like nobody's biz.)

The "scarped cliff" (which means a fracture in the earth's crust, or escarpment) and "quarried
stone" are places where fossils are found.

Studying this evidence showed scientists back then that many, many "types" (species) have been
lost over time.

So, if that's the case, Nature doesn't really give a fig for the species.

And that's a terrifying thought, one that emphasizes the idea of Nature being an antagonistic
force against puny human beings—which Tennyson has returned to several times in the poem.

The speaker notes that humankind is Nature's last work (and the greatest, it's suggested).

Man (meaning all of humanity) seemed to have a purpose, and built churches (a "fane" is an
archaic word for a church), sang psalms (songs of religious praise), and trusted in the divine love
of God. But all of this is in vain.

Another Famous Line Alert: all of this is because Nature is "red in tooth and claw" and "shrieks"
against this divine love. Violent image? You betcha.

Is the fate of humans then to be true and just and suffer, and then to just turn to dust and be
fossils themselves ("seal'd within the iron hills")? Is there nothing more for mankind?

Notice how the speaker seems to get more frantic over these two stanzas. He's speaking in
short, choppy phrases, with lots of internal stops within lines and tons of question marks.

His uncertainty and despair culminates in the penultimate stanza. He sees monsters tearing each
other apart in the slime. (Another archaic word: "tare" is the past tense of "tear.")

In the final stanza, he's really in despair mode, calling out to the spirit of Arthur to make him feel
better, and acknowledging that any hope for making sense out of all of this only exists in the
afterlife ("after the veil").
Matthew Arnold - Dover Beach: sadness, suffering, grating coś tam, spirituality loss

Thomas Hardy - Hap: no God, but chance, our fate lies is decided by chance, not diving powers

On the Western Curcuit: letters, deceit, Anna, Edith, Charles

Great Expectations: Pip, gentleman, Joe, Estella, convict - Magwitch,

Yeats - Easter 1916 - terrible beauty is born, uprising, not sure how to feel about it, sacrifice,

Yeats - Sailing to Byzantium - no country for the old men, ottava rima, old age, spirituality

D.H. Lawrence - ODOUR OF CHRYSANTHEMUMS Elizabeth Bates, husband died in a mine, social
differences, working class, language, death, alcohol

James Joyce - Araby: kid wanted to impress a girl, neutral uncle and aunt, went to market for a
gift for her, failed to buy, world is harsh

James Joyce - A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN: Stephen Dedalus, bildungs roman,
identity, transformation, religion

T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

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Tennyson Ulysses - boredom on Ithaca, he wants to sail, busy living not dying, doesnt
yield, strie and seek ye

THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE - vivid battle, crimean war, heroism

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese 14 - if thou must love me, love
for love, not due to beauty or other reasons

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray