Attempt a comparative study of Tennyson and Browning as poets. / How do Tennyson and Browning, in diverse ways, manifest their times?

Attempt a comparative study of Tennyson and Browning as poets. / How do Tennyson and Browning, in diverse ways, manifest their times?

Tennyson and Browning are the two literary titans of the Victorian age who towered over all other poets of the period for about help a century. However, as poets they have very little in common. While Tennyson was completely a representative of his age who glorified the greatness of England, its democracy and freedom, and dreamed of “The Parliament of Man, The Federation of the World”, Browning kept apart from all the political and religious turmoil of the age. In fact, Browning lived and wrote as if such things as Reform Bills, Catholic Emancipation, The Crimean War, The Indian Mutiny that never been. The only evidence we have of Browning’s patriotism is furnished by two little poems, “Home Thoughts from Abroad” and “Home thoughts from sea”. It is true that he lived in Italy after his marriage, and so had no interest in the tendencies and movements in Victorian England. But he was quite unresponsive to the Italian freedom struggle also even when Mrs. Browning was so-sympathetic to it. It means that Browning had no interest in contemporary history. His main interest was in the remote part, especially in the Italy of the Renaissance. No doubt, Tennyson also deals with subjects of remote time and place, but he fails to recapture the spirit of the past. Thus his king Arthur in “Idles of the king” is not a medieval king, but a Victorian gentleman.

            Being a poet of the 19^th century, Tennyson could not escape the influences of Romanticism. In his poetry Nature always predominates. In fact, it is nicely said that if Byron is the poet of the mountains and oceans, Shelley of cloud and air, Keats of the perfume of evening, Wordsworth of the meaning and mysteries of Nature as a whole, Tennyson is the poet of flowers, trees and birds. In the words of Harrison, “Of flowers and trees, he must be held to be the supreme master, above all who have written in English, perhaps indeed in any poetry”. Moreover, he is a perfect painter of Nature because he has portrayed it not only as benevolent, but also as cruel, “red in tooth and claw”. Just like a scientist he has penetrated through the nature. No doubt, Browning also loved Nature and also shows a keen appreciation of her beauties is such poems as “Home Thoughts from Abroad”, “Soul” etc., but Nature was nothing special to him. In fact, Nature except for a brief period in the 18^th century has been a perennial element of English poetry and especially after Wordsworth it is inconceivable that any poet could do with it, to which Browning is no exception. Browning interest in Nature is neither prominent, nor persistent as in the case of Tennyson..................................

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Milan Tomic

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