![]() ![]() ![]() Apparently, the object of the last voyage is the legendary "Happy Isles" (line 63), which Buckley and Woods gloss as "the Islands of the Blest, identified with the Elysian Fields as the abode of just men after death" (44). Is Ulysses' attitude towards his son one of grudging admiration or thinly disguised contempt? Is Ulysses trustworthy when he praises his son's ability to compromise, his patience, prudence, and administrative capabilities, or is he merely rationalizing his own abandonment of the people of Ithaca? Ulysses, after all, was renowned for his guilefulness and deception, even in Dante's Inferno, which is the basis for Tennyson's "last voyage" motivating circumstance for the poem.Ĩ. Whereas Tennyson's persona in "Ulysses" may be said to represent "the life of infinite search," Tennyson's Telemachus acts as a foil to the persona by standing for "the life of conscientious absorption in duty" (Chiasson 169). What other examples of "a hard and incisive" language do you detect in the first part of the poem? At what point does the tonal quality begin to shift? What is the nature of this change?ħ. a hardness which includes the startling an un-Tennysonian connubial insensitivity of the phrase 'match'd with an aged wife'" (Chiasson 167). ![]() Initially, the language of Tennyson's persona has "a hard and incisive quality. Although this poem may be classed as a dramatic monologue, it involves a shift in the implied auditor(s) and in tone. With what contemporary figures, then, might Victorian readers have tended to identify Tennyson's persona in "Ulysses" and why?Ħ. Thus, if we are to regard Tennyson's persona in a positive light, we must see his final voyage as potentially productive, as a journey of exploration. are to be valued only if they contribute to the good life, personal and social" (172). According to Chiasson, in "Ulysses" Tennyson expresses his realization "that Ulyssean determination and courage. What evidence from within the poem can you cite to defend or attack Chaisson's assertion?ĥ. destructive of the whole fabric of his society" (165-6). Chiasson believes that Tennyson's persona in "Ulysses" is not the admirable and resourceful hero of the Odyssey of Homer but a dramatic rendering "of a type of human being who held a set of ideas which. What aspects of the poem support this interpretation?Ĥ. In this poem Tennyson is elaborating upon a conviction he formed at Hallam's death "that life without faith leads to personal and social dislocation" (Chiasson 165). Question 2: What is the relationship between Tennyson's characterization of Ulysses and the Homeric and Dantesque versions of the legendary hero? And how does one's decision about that relationship affect the subject and meaning of the poem?ģ. Perhaps the most significant lines for Tennyson were these:Ĭould conquer in me the restless itch to roveĪnd rummage through the world exploring it. According to Dante's Ulysses, the voyage of southern exploration ended disastrously when from "out of the unknown land there blew foul weather, / And a whirlwind struck the forepart of the ship" (lines 137-8). For the hubristic act of daring to challenge the divinely ordained limits of the world, the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar), the hero, his ship, and crew are smashed by a great wave just as he catches sight of "the mountain of the Earthly Paradise, which, after Christ's Harrowing of Hell, becomes Mount Purgatory - the only land, according to Dante, in the Southern Hemisphere." (Sayers 239). Sayers' note indicates that the narrative of the last voyage derives from no known classical source, although an ambiguous prediction in the Odyssey implies that the hero will set out again: "from the sea shall thine own death come." Sayers describes the inset narrative as "Dante's own invention" (239), but sees in it the influences of the Celtic voyages of the Maelduin and St. Language, the tip of it flickering to and fro Wrestles against the wind and is over-worn Īnd, like a speaking tongue vibrant to frame Then of that age-old fire the loftier hornīegan to mutter and move, as a wavering flame Dante's Virgil compels Ulysses to narrate the story of his last voyage: Dante introduces the "crafty" Ulysses as a "false counsellor" in Canto XXVI of The Inferno in The Divine Comedy the poet and his guide, Virgil, meet the illustrious hero and deviser of the Trojan Horse in Circle VIII, Bowge viii, as a "double-flame" which he shares with his compatriot from the Trojan War, Diomedes. ![]()
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