THE SCEPTICAL STRAIN READINGS IN TENNYSON'S POETRY, 1829-1855 Aidan Day ...

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THE SCEPTICAL STRAIN
READINGS IN TENNYSON’S POETRY, 1829-1855
Aidan Day
Submitted in candidature for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
University of Leicester
1983
UMI Number: U344751
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to thank Dr Robindra Kumar Biswas and Professor Philip Collins
for their supervision in the writing of this thesis. For many
different kinds of support and encouragement I am profoundly indebted
to my parents, and to Susheila Nasta and Sarah Leigh.
11
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Notes on Sources, Abbreviations and References ................ iv
1. Introductory: The Spirit of Fable .......................... 1
2. Wasted Lands: *The Hesperides* and *TheL otos-Eaters* 55
3. Burning Fire: *Oenone* . . . . . .......................... 102
4. The Empty Phantom: The Lover's Tale (1832)..................144
5. The Archetype that Waits : In Memoriam..................... 197
6. That Abiding Phantom Cold: Maud.......................... 284
APPENDICES
A. The Manuscript Drafts of * Armageddon*...................... 347
B. G.S. Faber and Tennyson: A Note on theQ uestion of Influence . 388
C. The Textual Development of *Oenone* between Poems, 1832 and
Poems, 1842 .......................... 393
D. Notes on the Textual Development of The Lover*s Tale to 1868,
with a Transcription of the Earliest Extant
Manuscript Draft ................................. 414
Bibliography .............................................
111
NOTES ON SOURCES, ABBREVIATIONS AND REFERENCES
Except where noted otherwise I have used throughout this study
Christopher Ricks*s brilliantly authoritative standard edition of D#
Poems of Tennyson, Longman Annotated English Poets Series (London,
1969); hereafter cited as Ricks, Where a poem is mentioned for the
first time I have noted in brackets the date of its first publication.
In the case of works which originally appeared in the 1832 Poems and
which were then republished, extensively revised, in the 1842 Poems, I
have noted both dates. Where I discuss poems that appeared in both
1832 and 1842 I have used the 1842 version (all variants from 1832 are
given in Ricks). An identification of a poem as ^unpublished* means
unpublished in Tennyson*s lifetime. I have referred to manuscript
drafts of poems where such evidence has seemed relevant to my critical
discussion of the published texts. Details on my use of manuscript and
related material, together with references to the information
presented in the Appendices of this study, are given in my chapter
footnotes.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
I have used short titles for the following sources. Other titles and
references are given in full on the first citation and thereafter
referred to by short title and/or author/editor.
AHH Letters The Letters of Arthur Henry Hallam. ed. Jack Kolb
(Ohio, 1981).
IV
Campbell Tennyson in Lincoln: A Catalogue of the Collections in
the Research Centre, compiled by Nancie Campbell,2
vols (Lincoln, 1971-73).
Carey John Milton: Complete Shorter Poems, ed, John Carey,
Longman Annotated English Poets Series, Paperback
Edition (London, 1971).
Eversley The Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, annotated by Alfred
Lord Tennyson, ed. Hallam Tennyson, 9 vols (1907-8).
Fowler John Milton: Paradise Lost, ed. Alastair Fowler, Long­
man Annotated English Poets Series, Paperback Edition
(London, 1971).
Killham Critical Essays on the Poetry of Tennyson, ed, John
Killham (London, I960).
Letters The Letters of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, ed. Cecil Y.
Lang and Edgar F. Shannon, Jr., Vol I: 1821-1850
(Oxford, 1982). I am deeply indebted to the editors for
permission to quote from the typescript of the
forthcoming second volume of the Letters.
Memoir Hallam, Lord Tennyson, Alfred, Lord Tennyson: A Memoir
by his Son, 2 vols (London, 1897).
PMLA Publications of the Modern Language Association.
Tennyson Christopher Ricks, Tennyson (New York, 1972).
TLS Times Literary Supplement.
Wise Thomas J. Wise, A Bibliography of the Writings of
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 2 vols (Privately-Printed,
London, I9O8).
I have sometimes used TRC in reference to archival material now in the
Tennyson Research Centre, Lincoln,
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
In my quotations from the works of other poets I have used the
following editions.
Arnold The Poems of Matthew Arnold, ed. Kenneth Allott, Long­
man Annotated English Poets Series (London, 1965).
Browning Browning; Poetical Works, 1833-1864, ed. Ian Jack
(Oxford, 1970).
Coleridge Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed.
Ernest Hartley Coleridge, 2 vols (Oxford, 1912).
Keats The Poems of John Keats, ed. Miriam Allott, Longman
Annotated English Poets Series (London, 1970).
Milton Carey and Fowler
Shelley Shelley: Poetical Works, ed. Thomas Hutchinson, Oxford
Standard Authors Series (Oxford University Press,
London, originally published 1905; reset 1943).
Spenser Edmund Spenser: The Faerie Queene, ed. A.C. Hamilton,
Longman Annotated English Poets Series, Paperback
Edition (London and New York, 1980).
Wordsworth References to Wordsworth’s The Prelude are to the Text
of 1805 edited by Ernest de Selincourt (Oxford
University Press, London, 1933). All other quotations
VI
from Wordsworth are from the Poetical Works, edited by
Thomas Hutchinson and revised by Ernest de Selincourt,
Oxford Standard Authors Series (Oxford University
Press, London, 1936).
Translations of the classics are from the Loeb editions.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Portions of Chapter 2 have been published as ’Voices in a Dream: The
Language of Skepticism in Tennyson’s ’’The Hesperides’”, Victorian
Newsletter, No.62 (Fall 1982), pp.13-21. Appendix B, ’G.S. Faber and
Tennyson: A Note on the Question of Influence’, was published in Notes
and Queries, n.s., 27, 6 (December 1980), pp.520-22. Appendix C is a
slightly revised version of an article, ’Two Unrecorded Stages in the
Revision of Tennyson’s ’’Oenone” for Poems, 1842’, which appeared in
The Library, 6th Series, II, 3 (September 1980), pp.315-25.
Vll
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY: THE SPIRIT OF FABLE
In ’The Epic’, which serves as a frame prefacing and concluding
his early Arthurian poem ’Morte d’Arthur’ (1842), Tennyson contrives,
in the words of Edward FitzGerald, ’to anticipate or excuse the ’’faint
Homeric echoes’” of the poem, and ’to give a reason for telling an
1
old-world [Fairy-] tale’. The stratagem of ’The Epic’ takes the form
of a Christmas-eve discussion among a group of friends concerning an
epic poem in twelve books written by one of their number, Everard
Hall, during his college days. We learn that Hall consigned his poem
to the fire but that, through the intervention of his friend Francis
Allen, the eleventh book, the ’Morte d’Arthur’ has been preserved. The
explanation given as to why the poet originally rejected his work
reveals something of Tennyson’s sense of the inadequacy for his age of
traditional poetic mythologies. According to Francis Allen, Hall had
’thought that nothing new was said, or else
Something so said ’twas nothing — that a truth
Looks freshest in the fashion of the day (30-32)
By the Christmas fire Hall reaffirms this view:
’Why take the style of those heroic times?
For nature brings not back the Mastodon,
Nor we those times; and why should any man
Remodel models? these twelve books of mine
Were faint Homeric echoes, nothing-worth.
Mere chaff and draff, much better burnt (35-40)
The early-Victorian preoccupation — of which these lines are
characteristic — with the question of poetics, the feeling that
1. Cited Ricks, p.582.