Ulysses is a poem written by Alfred Tennyson. It is a dramatic monologue, whose main
character is Ulysses, the dramatis personae who is the intermediary between the
poet and the reader. Tennyson's Ulysses is taken by Homer's Odyssey but it is
seen from another point of view and it shows different aspects of the
character. First of all Homer's Ulysses is a middle-aged man, while Tennyson
Ulysses is an old man who has acquired wisdom through his travels and
experiences of life. As regard the setting, both come from the island of Ithaca
but in Tennyson's work the island represents Great Britain. This choice is not
casual: the writer wants to criticize English society considered mean, materialist,
narrow-minded which not even knows Ulysses (which could metaphorically allude
to the poet).That's the reason why Tennyson, through Ulysses words, defines it
as a "savage race that hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me". Moreover,
in Homer's Odissey Ulysses desires to come back home to see again his wife and
his son, while Tennyson's hero prefers explore the world instead of staying in
Ithaca together with his old wife living an idle life.

Both characters are pushed by a spirit of research, knowledge and will of new
experiences. While Homeric Ulysses finds rests when he finally comes back to
Ithaca, Tennyson's character is restless: he is aware that life is brief and
the world is too vast, it must be explored. In fact, making new experiences is
a way to discover his inner I. That leads to the awareness that we are the
result of what we have met and discovered ("I am a part of all that I have
met"). He thinks that reaching an end is boring, the man has always something
new to know.

Tennyson's Ulysses recalls Dante's Ulysses in his Inferno (26^th canto) which has an important effect on the
poem's interpretation. In Dante's re-telling, Ulysses is condemned to hell
among the false counselors, both for his pursuit of knowledge beyond human
bounds and for his adventures in disregard of his family. Both the characters
don't accept their limited knowledge, they want to discover more but this is
seen differently from the two poets: Dante condemns this eternal quest that
aims to make man similar to God (who knows everything); Tennyson, instead,
praises this quest, he considers it as the motor of knowledge and vitality
(opposed to boredom and idleness). Moreover, while Dante accuses the choice of
Ulysses to leave his family and his reign (he considers it as a treason),
Tennyson praises that choice and he proposes it as the model for his society,
which is based on getting richer and on the values of traditional family, where
the father is the head, he has to provide and sustain his family and he cannot
abandon it or he will be excluded from society.

Besides, Dante focuses on what Ulysses did, on his
actions, while Tennyson puts his attention on the human nature of his
character.

In conclusion, Tennyson portrays an unusual Ulysses, mainly concerned about the
seek of knowledge and never completely satisfied by what has been discovered.