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CTullis - 5A. Victorian Poetry and The Dramatic Monologue. Tennyson's Ulysses analysis
by - (2012-04-17)
Up to 5A. Victorian Poetry and The Dramatic Monologue
Ulysses by Alfred Tennyson was written in 1833 and published in1842. Tennyson's Ulysses is different from Dante's one and Joyce's one. He is old and at the beginning of the poem he has just returned to his Ithaca, but he doesn't like what he see. Ithaca is a sterile and rocky land, people don't know him, are savage and follow unequal laws. Furthermore his wife Penelope is aged and she isn't sensual.
So in the first five lines Ulysses is talking in first person and he is telling the reader what he has seen when he arrived in Ithaca. The metaphor of the "still hearth" suggest Ulysses mood. Tennyson's Ulysses in fact isn't burnt by a knowledge desire, but his personal fire and his passions are finished. When he sees his kingdom he is old and he is disappointed. Ulysses' frustration continues when he talks about Ithaca's citizens. His wife is old and people don't have moral behaviours: they "hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me".
In the following six lines Ulysses' speaking voice changed point of view: he is talking about himself. The reader understand that Ulysses is arrived at his last part of life because he is speaking about how he has lived his life in past tenses. His travel is finished and now he can only "drink life to the lees", that is to say that his life is going to terminate early. But Ulysses knows that people will remember him for his feats which have passed into legend: "I am become a name".
Going on the speaking voice of the protagonist assumes a proud tone. All his travels have exposed him to dangers but he have met many different types of people and ways of living so he has gained a lot of knowledge.