Tennyson's Rapture: Transformation in the Victorian Dramatic MonologueOxford University Press, 2008 M01 29 - 408 pages In the wake of the death of his friend Arthur Henry Hallam, the subject of In Memoriam, Alfred Tennyson wrote a range of intricately connected poems, many of which feature pivotal scenes of rapture, or being carried away. This book explores Tennyson's representation of rapture as a radical mechanism of transformation-theological, social, political, or personal-and as a figure for critical processes in his own poetics. The poet's fascination with transformation is figured formally in the genre he is credited with inventing, the dramatic monologue. Tennyson's Rapture investigates the poet's previously unrecognized intimacy with the theological movements in early Victorian Britain that are the acknowledged roots of contemporary Pentacostalism, with its belief in the oncoming Rapture, and its formative relation to his poetic innovation. Tennyson's work recurs persistently as well to classical instances of rapture, of mortals being borne away by immortals. Pearsall develops original readings of Tennyson's major classical poems through concentrated attention to his profound intellectual investments in advances in philological scholarship and archeological exploration, including pressing Victorian debates over whether Homer's raptured Troy was a verifiable site, or the province of the poet's imagination. Tennyson's attraction to processes of personal and social change is bound to his significant but generally overlooked Whig ideological commitments, which are illuminated by Hallam's political and philosophical writings, and a half-century of interaction with William Gladstone. Pearsall shows the comprehensive engagement of seemingly apolitical monologues with the rise of democracy over the course of Tennyson's long career. Offering a new approach to reading all Victorian dramatic monologues, this book argues against a critical tradition that sees speakers as unintentionally self-revealing and ignorant of the implications of their speech. Tennyson's Rapture probes the complex aims of these discursive performances, and shows how the ambitions of speakers for vital transformations in themselves and their circumstances are not only articulated in, but attained through, the medium of their monologues. |
From inside the book
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Page 4
... rhetorical and thematic patterns. These four poems span nearly the length of Tennyson's career, representing the uses to which this poet put this genre over the course of more than half a century. “St. Simeon Stylites,” “Ulysses ...
... rhetorical and thematic patterns. These four poems span nearly the length of Tennyson's career, representing the uses to which this poet put this genre over the course of more than half a century. “St. Simeon Stylites,” “Ulysses ...
Page 9
... rhetorically as to experience the sensation of being caught up physically. These poems narrate this process, but ... rhetorical exhibition or display, but also the accomplishment of some urgent ambition, however subtle or covert ...
... rhetorically as to experience the sensation of being caught up physically. These poems narrate this process, but ... rhetorical exhibition or display, but also the accomplishment of some urgent ambition, however subtle or covert ...
Page 10
... rhetorical efficacy, for the accomplishment of some effect in the course of the monologue, through the medium of the monologue itself. In making this case, I deviate significantly from other critics of the genre who, following Robert ...
... rhetorical efficacy, for the accomplishment of some effect in the course of the monologue, through the medium of the monologue itself. In making this case, I deviate significantly from other critics of the genre who, following Robert ...
Page 11
... rhetorical aims and effects, scrutinizing the performance of this highly structured monologue. I thus use Simeon as an exemplar of more general arguments I make about the genre in chapter 1, though, as we shall see, the monologue itself ...
... rhetorical aims and effects, scrutinizing the performance of this highly structured monologue. I thus use Simeon as an exemplar of more general arguments I make about the genre in chapter 1, though, as we shall see, the monologue itself ...
Page 15
... rhetorical and linguistic pleasure it can offer. Oratory, he writes, “is an art, circumscribed by definite laws which have their origin in the creative power of genius.”2 I draw throughout this book from Hallam's theories of suasive ...
... rhetorical and linguistic pleasure it can offer. Oratory, he writes, “is an art, circumscribed by definite laws which have their origin in the creative power of genius.”2 I draw throughout this book from Hallam's theories of suasive ...
Contents
3 | |
15 | |
UNREAL CITY VICTORIANS IN TROY | 121 |
THE RAPTURE OF THE SONGBUILT CITY | 205 |
Tennysons Apotheosis | 339 |
Notes | 351 |
Index | 385 |
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Common terms and phrases
Achilles Aeneas aesthetic Alfred Tennyson ambition Apollo appears argues aristocratic Arthur Hallam Arthur Henry Hallam articulation attain audience auditors Aurora beauty become blank verse calls Cambridge Apostles Carlyle Christ claims classical critical death debate describes desire discursive divine dramatic monologists dramatic monologue early essay example father figure Fredeman genre Gladstone Gladstone’s God’s gods grasshopper Greek hear Homer Iliad Ilion imagines immortality Irving letter lines literary Lotos-Eaters lyric Memnon Memoir Menœceus monologist monologue’s notes nyson Oenone orator oratorical Paris performance pillar poem’s poet poet’s poetic poetry political Priam Quintilian rapture readers Reform resemblance rhetorical saints Schliemann seeks seems sense Simeon Stylites simile similitude song song-built sound speaker speaking speech suasive Tennyson Tennyson’s dramatic Tennyson’s poems Tennyson’s Ulysses Thirlwall thou tion Tiresias Tiresias’s Tithonus Tithonus’s trans transformation translation Trench Trojan Troy Troy’s Ulysses University Press utterance Victorian voice walls Whig words writes wrote