Alfred Lord Tennyson Research Paper

Many of Tennyson’s poems consists of the grieve and loneliness he faces throughout his life, the death of his beloved friend Arthur Hallum in 1833 sparked some of Tennyson’s greatest works. Shortly after the death of his friend, Tennyson’s father pasted as well, Tennyson also received a lot of ridicule for his poetry around the same time. These few events had such an impact on Alfred Tennyson’s writings and poems, writing almost helped him to process his grief. In 1834, a year after the death of Arthur, Tennyson wrote Break, Break, Break. In Break, Break, Break, we see Alfred Tennyson try to understand what he is feeling. He writes, “/Break, break, break, /On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!/ And I would that my tongue could utter, / The thoughts

Web. 17 Feb. 2017. .) Alfred Lord Tennyson uses the consistency of the sea waves as a symbol, for the ocean, the waves will always be crash upon the shore, it is a continuous thing that never stops. Tennyson felt like the world around him continued as normal, but with the loss of his friend, for him everything had changed. The ocean can also be used as a symbol, Tennyson sees the sea as something that is parallel to what he is feeling. The emotions he felt were so in depth, very similar to the ocean depth. Alfred Lord Tennyson expresses how he could not even voice his own feeling of loss and grief, this corresponds to the idea that humans truly can not fully understand how deep the ocean it. This huge symbolism could also relate to the fact that the ocean depth causes people to drown. The depth of the ocean is so complex and interesting, but also dangerous if a person is engulfed in its depth. Alfred Lord Tennyson as an author, writes about how he is drowning in his emotions and feelings and truly as a human, he cannot fully understand the depth of his grief. Tennyson’s feelings of grief and loss truly engulfed and consumed

“Tennyson’s works in proportion to its depth and truth is likely to have little immediate authority over public opinion," his reference to "depth and truth" suggests that the authority of melancholy proceeds from the depths of the poetic self, and carries with it the truth of feeling.” (Riede, David G. "Tennyson's Poetics of Melancholy and the Imperial Imagination." Poetry Criticism, edited by Michelle Lee, vol. 101, Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center, http://tinyurl.com/zechepj .18 Feb. 2017. Originally published in Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, vol. 40, no. 4, Autumn 2000, pp. 659-678.) Alfred Lord Tennyson states in the last stanza that he not only mourns the loss of his friend, but he also misses the happy days that have died as well and he says that those days will never return. T. S. Eliot expresses, “Although Tennyson had little of consequence to say, he was "the saddest of all English poets" and thus able to communicate the depths of his being from "the abyss of sorrow" because of his remarkable "technical