TENNYSON’S ULYSSES

Alfred Tennyson wrote “Ulysses” in 1833.

Tennyson’s Ulysses is very different from Dante and Joyce’one. In fact he is old and tired and, at the beginning, when he has just returned at home, he doesn’t like what he see. He finds his Ithaca inhabited by people, who are only concerned with material life and who don’t know him. Ithaca is became a rocky land and his wife Penelope too. Ulysses doesn’t appreciate her because she is became aged and not sensual.

In the first part of the dramatic monologue, Ulysses is talking in first person and he is telling what he has seen when he returns to Ithaca. His mood is suggested by the metaphor “still heart”.

Ulysses is not like the others one because his personal fire and his passion are finished. But he is frustration and it continues when he talks about Ithaca’s people and when he sees his kingdom.

In the next lines Ulysses’ speaking  voice changed: now he is talking to himself. So the reader has to interpreted his monologue: Ulysses returns at his past life and he recognized that he is arrived at his part of life. Now his travel, which is expressed by words linked to the semantic field of sea,  is finished and he can only “drink life to the lees”.