Activities on Tennyson’s Ulysses

Exercise 1

Ulysses is talking and he is talking to the mariners.  He is old aged, Ulysses is on the isalnd of Ithaca and he is setting out on discovering the world.

Exercise 2

His past life: Ulysses thinks about his past life and thinks it was great, like the adjectives suggest

View of present and future:  you have to travel and find new things in the world, because if not life gets to rust

Attitude to Telemachus: Telemachus is small, silent, a sinking star for Ulysses

Address to his mariners: thought with him and they are souls toil’d, wrought and thought

Exercise 3a

Ulysses is in Troy whit his mariners and he would like to discover the rest of the world. He is the symbol of braveness and greatness.

Exercise 3b

The poet finds in Ulysses a grate and brave man, instead defines Telemachus as little, indeed he sides with Ulysses.

Exercise 4

Yes, it does. It reflects a sense of loss of conscience and desire to seek for everything besides his small reality.

Exercise 5

The rhythm is really musical and there is a precise connection between words and meaning.