ISBN: 9780217162906

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustra… More...

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 edition. Excerpt: ...unessential, while it abandons what he held to be indubitable. It may be, we say--for the course of philosophical discovery is impossible to predict. But even if Tennyson''s axioms should be rejected, it still may be that his profound sincerity, his poignant emotion in the presence of the deepest FAITH IN GOD 119 mysteries, and above all the lucid solemnity, the stately dignity of his language, will continue to make his work a permanent monument of the human spirit; as permanent, that is, as any trophy of the human mind can dare to claim to be. CHAPTER VIII IT is interesting to attempt to trace the literary influences and to discuss the writers on which the genius of Tennyson was nurtured. As a child he seems to have read Byron, Thomson, Pope--whom he called a consummate artist in the lower sense of the term--and Walter Scott. It is noticeable that many of the early poems are mere Byronic exercises. He improvised hundreds of lines in the style of Pope, and he wrote an early epic in the style of Walter Scott. He was attracted by Thomson''s descriptions of nature and wrote with facility in imitation of him. At the age of twelve he wrote a long critical letter to an aunt on the subject of Samson (spelt Sampson) Agonistes, mainly composed of quotations, in which he pronounces Milton a pedant. It is not recorded what his favourite poetical reading was before he went to the university, but he must have read Milton carefully, and the influence of Keats is distinctly traceable in the Cambridge prize poem on Tim-buctoo; there are, too, curious traces of the study LITERARY INFLUENCES 121 of Shelley in The Lover''s Tale of 1833, after which date the direct influence of other poetry on his style seems to have ceased; he himself stated that in later years... Arthur Christopher Benson, Books, Fiction and Literature, Literary Theory and Criticism, Alfred Tennyson Books>Fiction and Literature>Literary Theory and Criticism <

ISBN: 9780217162906

A study in which the critic integrates the life of Tennyson with a view of the poet's characteristics, techniques, and poetic theories. Books History~~General Alfred-Tennyson~~Arthur-Chri… More...

A study in which the critic integrates the life of Tennyson with a view of the poet's characteristics, techniques, and poetic theories. Books History~~General Alfred-Tennyson~~Arthur-Christophe-Benson General Books LLC<

ISBN: 0217162908

Alfred Tennyson Author :Arthur Christopher Benson 9780217162906 0217162908