In Memoriam
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
|
|
|
Long elegy to Arthur Henry Hallam
published in 1850 |
|
Examined life and death, human
relationship to God and nature |
|
Combined personal, subjective poetry
with art of social and ideological responsibility |
|
Reflected Victorian fears of loss in
changing times, expressed religious doubts of the age |
|
|
|
|
Sections 1-3, pp.
1232-1233
|
|
|
Introduce Tennyson’s initial attitudes
toward sorrow/loss |
|
Do loss and sorrow actually bring a
greater good? |
|
Do death and sorrow make life
meaningless? |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Sections 54-56
|
|
|
|
Express Tennyson’s central crisis of
faith |
|
Scientific discoveries (e.g., fossils)
suggest God and Nature are “at strife” |
|
Nature causes all species to pass away
(evolution)—is life then meaningless? |
|
Answers lie hidden “behind the veil” |
|
|
|
|
Sections 28, 78, 104-106
|
|
|
|
Recount the evolution of Tennyson’s
grief through the three Christmas holidays after Hallam’s death |
|
Despair, tinged with nostalgia and
faint hope |
|
Calm, tearless sorrow |
|
Hope—Let go of old sorrow and make way
for new understanding |
|
|
|
|
Sections 118,
127-Epilogue
|
|
|
|
Recount renewal of Tennyson’s faith |
|
Sec. 118—sorrow strengthens us, causes
us to evolve spiritually |
|
Sec. 127-131—speaker’s friend is not
lost but has become part of a larger truth |
|
Epilogue—Hallam was a fore-runner of
the spiritual perfection toward which all creation evolves |
|
|
|
|