Victorian Poetry

AhmadaDeny Ramadhani

Ira susantiMasmawati

Definition of Victorian Poetry

• Victorian poetry is self-defining: poetry written during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901). But the dates of Victoria's reign also seem to mark out a consistent sensibility in poetry. Victorian poets were heirs to the romantics, and many of the generalizations about Romantic poetry still apply: distrust of organized religion, skepticism, interest in the occult and the mysterious.

Biography of Alfred Lord Tennyson

Alfred Tennyson was born on Aug. 6, 1809 in Somersby, Lincolnshire to a middle class family. Tennyson was the fourth of the 12 children born to rector Rev. George Clayton Tennyson and Elizabeth Fytche, who was a vicar’s daughter. His father not only oversaw the rectory at Somersby but served in the towns of Benniworth, Bag Enderby and Grimsby as well during the boy’s life. Lord Alfred Tennyson, arguably the most prominent of the Victorian Poets, held the title of Poet Laureate for over forty years. His poems were marked a wide range of topics from romance, to nature, to criticism of political and religious institutions; a pillar of the establishment not failing to attack the establishment. His Charge of the Light Brigade was a fierce criticism of a famous military blunder; while the Princess dealt with pseudo-chivalry common among the royalty. The poems of In Memoriam dealt with Tennysons exploration of his feelings of love, loss and desire.

The poetry by TennysonMARIANA

‘Mariana in the moated grange.’ —Measure for Measure

With blackest moss the flower-plots Were thickly crusted, one and all: The rusted nails fell from the knots

That held the pear to the gable-wall. The broken sheds look’d sad and strange:

Unlifted was the clinking latch; Weeded and worn the ancient thatch

Upon the lonely moated grange. She only said, ‘My life is dreary,

He cometh not,’ she said; She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,

I would that I were dead!’ Her tears fell with the dews at even;

Her tears fell ere the dews were dried; She could not look on the sweet heaven,

Either at morn or eventide.

• After the flitting of the bats, When thickest dark did trance the sky, She drew her casement-curtain by, And glanced athwart the glooming flats. She only said, ‘The night is dreary, He cometh not,’ she said; She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead!’ Upon the middle of the night, Waking she heard the night-fowl crow: The cock sung out an hour ere light: From the dark fen the oxen’s low Came to her: without hope of change, In sleep she seem’d to walk forlorn, Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn About the lonely moated grange. She only said, ‘The day is dreary, He cometh not,’ she said; She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead!’ About a stone-cast from the wall

• She only said, ‘My life is dreary, He cometh not,’ she said; She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead!’ And ever when the moon was low, And the shrill winds were up and away, In the white curtain, to and fro, She saw the gusty shadow sway. But when the moon was very low, And wild winds bound within their cell,

• The shadow of the poplar fell Upon her bed, across her brow. She only said, ‘The night is dreary, He cometh not,’ she said; She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead!’ All day within the dreamy house, The doors upon their hinges creak’d; The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek’d,

• Or from the crevice peer’d about. Old faces glimmer’d thro’ the doors, Old footsteps trod the upper floors, Old voices called her from without. She only said, ‘My life is dreary, He cometh not,’ she said; She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead!’ The sparrow’s chirrup on the roof, The slow clock ticking, and the sound Which to the wooing wind aloof

• The poplar made, did all confound Her sense; but most she loathed the hour When the thick-moted sunbeam lay Athwart the chambers, and the day Was sloping toward his western bower. Then, said she, ‘I am very dreary, He will not come,’ she said; She wept, ‘I am aweary, aweary,

• Oh God, that I were dead!’

Analysis of Tennyson’s poetry Mariana

1. Story/narrationThis poem derives from a line in Measure for Measure : “Mariana in the moated grange”, where she waits for a lover, Angelo, who in fact has jilted her.• The poem is highly descriptive and contains some striking images but it is not really a narrative: nothing happens. It is a poem that is about depression, abandonment, isolation.

‘Mariana in the moated grange.’ —Measure for Measure

2. Stanzas“Mariana” takes the form of seven twelve-line stanzas. Central couplet perhaps binds stanzas tightly, prevents advancement.3. Rhyme“Mariana” takes the form of seven twelve-line stanzas, each of which is divided into three four-line rhyme units according to the pattern ABAB CDDC EFEF. 4. Language• Imagery: visual but little metaphor,• Simile is static metonymic• Lexis/ diction focuses on synonyms for decay, negativity -everything is

damp, decaying, mouldy, even the sense of the poem ‘s reshness; has few active present-tense verbs• Sound: assonance, hence sad•assonanta