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Tennyson's Perseverance And Optimism In Poetry

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It should be a matter of great honour and worthy too to incorporate the creative aspect of the poet laureate Alfred Lord Tennyson. The influence of John Keats and other Romantic poets published before and during his childhood is evident from the richness of his imagery and descriptive writing. It reflects the Victorian periodof his maturity in his feeling for order and his tendency towards moralizing. The aim of this paper is to depict the notion of his virtuous concept relating to perseverance and optimism of human beings as well as of his own life. He was no doubt a man of optimist. Tennyson used a wide range of subject matter ranging from medieval legends to classical myths and from domestic situations to observations of nature. Like many …show more content…

Many of his poems are about the temptation to give up and fall prey to pessimism, but they also extol the virtues of optimism and discuss the importance of struggling on with life. The need to persevere and continue is the central theme of In Memoriam and “Ulysses” (1833), both written after Hallam’s death. Perhaps because of Tennyson’s gloomy and tragic childhood, perseverance and optimism also appear in poetry written before Hallam’s death, such as “The Lotos-Eaters” (1832, 1842). Poems such as “The Lady of Shalott” (1832, 1842) and “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (1854) also vary this theme: both poems glorify characters who embrace their destinies in life, even though those destinies end in tragic death. The Lady of Shalott leaves her seclusion to meet the outer world, determined to seek the love that is missing in her life. The cavalrymen in “The Charge of the Light Brigade” keep charging through the valley toward the Russian cannons; they persevere even as they realize that they will likely die. Tennyson lived during a period of great scientific advancement, and he used his poetry to work out the conflict between religious faith and scientific

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