The analysis of “Ulysses” by Tennyson

The denotative analysis

Ulysses is the 1^st person narrator of the poem. He has already come back to Ithaca but he doesn't feel like remaining there. The first reason the reader run into is that Ulysses dislikes his wife and his people. The second and most important reason is that he cannot help travelling which is a metaphor for the improving of knowledge. He wants to enjoy his life the best he can and in order to do so he must experience his feelings in the extremest way. He has become part of what he has seen and of where he has been, that is of what he has known. He has not too much to live and he doesn't want to stop because that would be like stopping from breathing, stopping from living. The poet's words are clear enough in this case: “To follow knowledge like a sinking star, beyond the utmost bound of human thought”. Ulysses will keep on travelling and improving his knowledge until he dies, thus he will keep on living the best he can as much as he can. He leaves the power to his son Telemachus, who will efficiently rule by softly subduing the people to “the useful and the good”, which is a clear irony appealing to the Victorian ethic.

He comes back to his crew with whom he has shared all his experiences, all his freedom and now also his old age. He is absolutely conscious of life and death and he is determined to choose the way he will spend the life which is left: he has decided how to die. “To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths of all the western star, until I die”.

They are not young and strong any more but they are terribly conscious: “that which we are, we are; one equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate but strong in will. To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield”. Ulysses and his crew lives utterly free because they struggle for knowledge and they do not give up in front of death, which “closes all”.

The connotative analysis

The syntactical level

The use of dramatic-monologue gives a lot of freedom to the poet, who focuses more on the content of the speech than on the style. The syntax is complicated: the structure of the lines is very often radically changed in order to stress some particular words within a line (for instance “know not me”).

The semantic level

The language used is plenty of every day words and it is also characterised by the use of the Victorian vocabulary, for example “It little profits”,”the useful and the good”.

The word “I” is very often used in the text, more than what seems necessary. Some textual clues also suggest an emotional involvement by the poet, for example “how dull is to pose”. These two elements together with the use of dramatic-monologue makes the reader suppose that Ulysses' ideas are the poet's ideas.

The main semantic field is the field of actions. Almost every line keeps one or more verbs of action with it and they stress the Ulysses' concept of life.

The rhetorical level

The use of dramatic-monologue lets the poet convey his ideas more freely. The voyage of Ulysses is the metaphor for the struggle for knowledge. As Ulysses and his crew cannot help travelling and undergoing a lot of difficulties, thus men cannot stop from discovering and keeping on improving the human knowledge and culture. The context of the industrial revolution probably suggested this point of view to the poet. The efficient life is the life utterly enjoyed by the struggle for knowledge. In addition to this, despite the improving of knowledge is considered a rational process, the source of the will to know more and more is something irrational, it is a passion who comes from within. The dualism between mind and passions characterises the Ulysses.