Alfred Lord Tennyson Research Paper

Alfred, Lord Tennyson was a known literary genius during the Victorian Age of England which took place from 1830-1901. The Victorian Age was a time of change. Once a docile, rural country, England had now evolved into an industrialized one. Increased food production due to new machinery and central banks due to financial innovations were just a few of the many changes that took place at this time. It is inferred that Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s masterpieces were influenced by apprehension and eagerness of the Industrial Revolution in England, as well as political issues, enlightened thinking, and Greek mythology. In his poems Ulysses and The Lotus Eaters, Alfred, Lord Tennyson calls to mind the ending of an era. The Greek war heroes restlessly

Traditionalists believed in a patriarchal society with high social graces and religious conformity (Shepard). It was a time of literature, art, social and religious movements, and technological and scientific advancements, but also a time of great anxiety. Factories creating textile and other materials in urban areas created new jobs, which brought people from rural areas, and as a result increased the population. The increase in population created the middle class and thus diminishing the old hierarchal order between the rich and the poor. Railroad systems improved transportation and a breakthrough in science brought changes in

The eating of the lotus causes the men to feel weary and to linger on shores instead of returning home. The men sing, “Why are we weight’d upon with heaviness, and utterly consumed with sharp distress, while all things else have rest from weariness? All things have rest: why should we toil alone, we only toil, who are the first of things, and make perpetual moan, still from one sorrow to another thrown” (Damrosch). They question why man is the only one who has to experience unhappiness and worry in the world while nature is always at rest. Alfred, Lord Tennyson articulates that the men who eat the lotus are living in a world of “make believe” and that a simple life does not exist. Similarly, this goes for the traditionalists of England, who idealized England to be a simple, black and white place, but could not escape societal