![]() ![]() The language is richly figurative and the poet tends to use “poetical” words, that is to create a Romantic "poetic diction" in contrast with Wordsworth theory of the return of the language to everyday life.Īppunti correlati Critical Analysis of Ulisses by Tennyson They are there as an audience, not as interlocutors. Their presence is essential but not individualized. This dramatic monologue has the features of a high-flown sustained speech of a king and of a leader to his men. But on a more general level he becomes a methaphor for human existence, in which even the most optimistic view of life- the one which interprets life as material and intellectual progress- is never separated from the melancholy awareness of the destiny of decline and death reserved for all men. On the personal level Ulysses becomes the alter ego giving expression to his torturing doubts about man's role and destiny after death. That gives a note of melancholy to the poem which filters through lines 1ike: “made weak by time and fate”, “you and I are old”, etc. It is his realization of having lived the best part of his life, of having 1ost the integrity of his body and his energies it is his awareness that death will soon put an end to everything. Another aspect of Ulysses' personality, however enriches his figure, making it poignant1y human. Under this aspect he is contrasted only with his son Telemachus who represents the balancing force of stability and conservation. So Ulysses becomes the expression of the dynamic man Tennyson's times, who believes that he has the right and the duty of exploit all the possibilities of the human intelligence. The nineteenth century faith in science and progress had long cancelled man's fear of going beyond the limits imposed by God ( the Philars of Hercules in Dante's XXVI canto), which had tormented the medieval mind. But, unlike Dante's Ulysses, Tennyson is not going to break a divine law.
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