UlyssesBy Alfred Tennyson

Omar Antabli

OutlineAbout Alfred Tennyson

The legend of Ulysses

“Ulysses” by Alfred Tennyson

Form

Who is the narrator? & Who is he addressing?

Where do these events take place?

How are the four sections of this poem divided?

How is this poem a reflection of Alfred Tennyson?

Analysis

References

Alfred Tennyson(1809 – 1892) Born on August 6, 1809, in

Somersby, Lincolnshire, England.

The fourth of twelve children, showed an early talent for writing.

He escaped home in 1827 to attend Trinity College, Cambridge.

He succeeded Wordsworth as British Poet Laureate in 1950.

At the age of 41, Tennyson had established himself as the most popular poet of the Victorian era.

Ulysses The Latin

equivalent of the Greek Odysseus.

He was the king of Ithaca, a Greek island.

He was The Hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem "Ulysses" presents an aging king who has seen too much of the world to be happy sitting on a throne idling his days away.

Tennyson penned "Ulysses" after the death of his close Cambridge friend, the poet Arthur Henry Hallam (1811–1833).

Ulysses By Alfred Tennyson

Form

This poem is written as a dramatic monologue.

The lines are in blank verse, or unrhymed iambic pentameter.

Many of the lines are enjambed, which means that a thought does not end with the line-break.

The poem is divided into four paragraph-like sections, each of which comprises a distinct thematic unit of the poem.

Who is the narrator?

&Who is he

addressing?

Who is the narrator?Who is he addressing?Ulysses is the speaker in this poem.

Ulysses seems to speak to himself in the first two paragraphs.

In the third paragraph he turns to an audience as he introduces his son, Telemachus.

In the last section, he addresses the mariners.

Where do these events take place?

Where do these events take place?

The poem takes place in several places in Ithaca:

The hearth in Ulysses' palace or castle.

The port.

By the ship (with the mariners).

How are the four sections of this poem divided?

How are the four sections of this poem

divided?They’re divided into four emotional stages, which Ulysses moves through:

Ulysses expresses his lack of contentment, including his indifference toward the "savage race" (line 4) that he governs.

Ulysses contrasts his restlessness and boredom with his heroic past, He contemplates his age and eventual death. and longs for further experience and knowledge.

His son Telemachus will inherit the throne that Ulysses finds burdensome.

Ulysses turns his attention to his mariners and calls on them to join him on another quest, making no guarantees as to their fate but attempting to conjure their heroic past.

How is this poem a reflection of Alfred Tennyson?

How is this poem a reflection of Alfred

Tennyson?This poem was composed in the first few weeks after Tennyson learned of the death of his dear college friend Arthur Henry Hallam in 1833.

Ulysses, who symbolizes the grieving poet, proclaims his resolution to push onward in spite of the awareness that “death closes all” (l.51).

As Tennyson himself stated, the poem expresses his own “need of going forward and braving the struggle of life” after the loss of his beloved Hallam.

Analysis Ulysses references Greek Mythology multiple times as way to remind us of his heroic past and give us a sense of his future ambitions:

Reference to Troy (l.16)

“strove with Gods” (l.53)

“Happy Isles” (l.63)

“Achilles” (l.64)

Ulysses believes there’s plenty left to explore in the world:He compares life to an arch and explains that the “untraveled world” gleams through it (l.19-21)

He intends to sail “beyond the sunset” (l.60)

There’s a condescending tone in his description of his subjects. Also, when he’s talking about his son.

Ulysses pejoratively compares his subjects to animals. They “feed” and “hoard” (l.5), and he believes they should be “subdued”. (l.37)

Analysis The poem’s final line, “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield,” came to serve as a motto for the poet’s Victorian contemporaries:

The poem’s hero longs to flee the tedium of daily life “among these barren crags” (l.2) and to enter a mythical dimension “beyond the sunset, and the baths of all the western stars” (l.60–61)

Ulysses was a model of individual self-assertion and the Romantic rebellion against bourgeois conformity.

“Ulysses,” deals with the desire to reach beyond the limits of one’s field of vision and the mundane details of everyday life:

Ulysses “cannot rest from travel” and longs to roam the globe (l.6).

Ulysses hungers to explore the untraveled world.

Referenceshttp://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/lord-alfred-tennyson

http://s586.photobucket.com/user/myopicpoet/media/Poets%20II/LordAlfredTennyson.jpg.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odysseus

http://towerpoetry.ca/poetryplus/talk-DMonologue.html

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/c6/47/cd/c647cdbb93abb27ca3d9fb7c4c41bc81.jpg

http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/tennyson/section4.rhtml

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_(poem