Lord Alfred Tennyson wrote Ulysses after the death of his friend  Arthur Hallam which deeply affected him. The title of the text is Ulysses. It immediately reminds the reader the protagonist of Homer’s Odyssey who is considered a hero because able to pass several trials and tests. Ulysses also provides an example of smartness, intelligence, courage and strength. Moreover, the clever hero was often used in literature, to convey a particular idea of the writer. First of all by Dante, who put Ulysses in Hell because he dared to go beyond Hercules’ Pillers, than by Lord Alfred Tennyson and also by James Joyce during the modern age.

The poem is a dramatic monologue, and it is the result of Lord Alfred Tennyson  sens of loss. The speaking voice is not Tennyson, but Ulysses himself, so the writer provides the reader the use of the dramatis personae.

Differently from Homer and Dante’s Ulysses, here the protagonist is old. He is and idle king, who comes back to his island Ithaca to find out he doesn’t appreciate it anymore. The land is sterile, his wife is old and people are selfish and think just about hoard,sleep and feed. The island description is a metaphor for the england of 19th century in which the industrial revolution had turned human beings into machines.