5LSCA - CDeSimone - Tennyson's Ulysses
by CDeSimone - (2020-03-29)
Up to 5LSCA - IV WEEK : March 29th,2020 - V WEEK: April 4th,2020 - Victorian Poetry
- Ulysses is speaking to himself in the first stanza, then he speaks to an unknown audience about his son, and in the last stanza he speaks to the mariners.
He is an old man who hasn’t decided yet between staying at home and starting a new adventure around the world.
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Life on Ithaca (lines 2-5)
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It is uncivilised and… Negative adjectives such as idol, aged convey Ulysses’ total dissatisfaction with life on Ithaca
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Need to travel (lines 6-12)
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Ulysses earned his name through his experiences. He boned with his peers and his ship. He loves every part of it (also the stormy clouds rainy Hyades). He wants to do it to the lees.
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His past life (13-17)
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Ulysses is nostalgic for his past adventure in where he had seen and known things and people, include himself (Myself not least) and for glory (drunk delight of battle).
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His growth (18)
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His past adventures shaped who he is now.
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View of present and future (19-32)
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Experience is like an arch, a window opened to the new. Stopping and staying in one place is described with negative adjective (dull); it is like unburnished rust (corrosive). It is compared to the simple act of breathing. Eternal silence is death from which he has to save as much as he can.
His desire is expressed by referring to the cosmos, a place reachable just for a few.
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Attitude to Telemachus (33-44)
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Tennyson underlines Telemachus’ best qualities. It is not aid anything that could damage his characterization, so it is easier to think about Ulysses leaving again.
Telemachus represents the Victorian view devoted to the social duties.
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Address to his mariners (45-70)
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Ulysses encourages his mariners not to give up and to seek newer experiences.
Tennyson refers more than one time to death: this gives the poem a note of melancholy.
Ulysses tells them that they will lose quite a lot (melancholy), but they will still have much left (optimism).
The romantic idea has got the imperialism idea (the great empire of queen Victoria).
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- Ulysses portrays the Victorian values and the way of thinking of that period: “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield” is the motto for the poet’s Victorian Age. He is a model of individual self-assertion and the Romantic rebellion against bourgeois conformity. He deals with the desire to reach beyond the limits of one’s field of vision and the mundane details of everyday life.
- Yes, it does. Ulysses symbolizes the grieving poet. He pushes forward in spite of the awareness that “death closes all”.
- The poem is divided into four paragraph-like sections with different thematic. The lines are in blank verse. This poem is a dramatic monologue spoken by a single character. Many of the lines are enjambed, which means that a thought does not end with the line-break; the sentences often end in the middle, rather than the end of the lines.
