Tennysons In Memoriam Essay -- Tennyson Elogy Memoriam Essays

Tennysons In Memoriam In Memoriam is an elegy to Tennysons friend Arthur Hallam, notwithstanding bears the stylemark of its mid(prenominal) nineteenth century context, the locus classicus of the science-and-religion debate.Upon reflection, Hallams tragic death has turn up to be an event that provoked Tennysons embarkation upon a much to a greater extent ambitious poetic project than conventional Miltonian elegy, involving meditation upon the profoundest questions faced by mankind. Scientific advancements, most notably in the fields of geology and biology, challenged the teachings that form the psychiatric hospital of Christianity the belief in a large-hearted God responsible for cosmos and ensuing superintendence and the belief in mans immortal soul. By the mid nineteenth century apologist arguments such as those of William Paley could no interminable convincingly reconcile science and faith. In Memoriam stands as a action that truly represents the anxieties within t he Victorian mind. Queen Victoria once remarked that In Memoriam was her closest consolation, after the bible, following her husbands death. This essay charts the consoling properties of In Memoriam and interrogates the model of Tennyson as a reinventor of faith for the move scientific old age.There is a consensus among critics, such as Matthes and Willey, that Lyell?s Principles of Geology provoked much of Tennyson?s troubling religious doubts that were to be compounded when his dearest friend was robbed from him. Lyell made no explicit challenge to Christian scripture (and indeed made attempts in his work to ensure readers did not interpret his work as such), al peerless his assertion that the Earth?s landscape was shaped by an highly long and gradual process of weathering presupposed a much greater age for the Earth than was allowed for in biblical chronology. Essentially Lyell?s theories questioned the Christian belief in Divine creation of the Earth over a completion of sev en days. Lyell?s discussion of the disco very(prenominal) of fossilised remains of nonextant animals was perhaps even more troubling because it questioned the existence of a beneficent providential power and the notion of divine superintendence. Principles of Geology was so earth-shattering because essentially it questioned the very validity of euthesitic belief, whether God really does have his eye cast on every sparrow that falls to earth.Brooke asserts that In Memoriam i... ...ress to God seems to a tiny reader too much like a denial of fertile seated doubts through religious immersion. In Memoriam demonstrates Tennyson?s masterful supervise of language to create a fitting tribute to his deceased friend, but his genius lies in transcending this initial subject matter to embrace one at the heart of the Victorian psyche- the challenge of scientific discoveries to deeply held Christian belief. He reinvents faith in the sense that he encourages a diametric angle to view it from , and encourage a holistic approach to the reputation of nature in which scientific and religious approaches are not inversely exclusive.BibliographyBaldick, Chris The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (Oxford Oxford University Press, 2001)Brooke, Stopford A Tennyson His Art and apprisal to Modern Life (London Ibister and Company Limited, 1894)Hunt, John (ed.) Tennyson In Memoriam A textbook (London Macmillan, 1970)Mattes, Eleanor Bustin In Memoriam The Way of a Soul (New York Exposition Press, 1951)Moi, Torl Sexual textual Politics (London Routledge, 1995)Willey, Basil More Nineteenth Century Studies (London Chatto and Windus, 1956)