Andrew's Wiki
Tennyson Ulysses

Content

• Aged Ulysses can’t stand his decrepit wife and his pussy little son, who is patient and gentle with the “savage” race on Ithaca
  • Tennyson is so full of it he thinks Ulysses would call his own countrymen “savages”
  • “He works his work, I mine.”
• Despite his being old, “some work of noble note may yet be done”
  • “Tis not too late:” it’s like a Viagra ad
• Even though we might die, still “that which we are, we are; / One equal temper of heroic hearts”
• Coy mixture of pride and understatement, very much of the mid Victorian flavor despite its being only 1833: “not unbecoming men who strove with the Gods”

Form

• Full of awesome cinematic perfect lines: “It little profits that an idle king,” “I will drink / Life to the lees,” “I am become a name,” “hungry heart, “drunk delight of battle with my peers,” “as tho’ to breathe were life,” “life piled on life”
• A classic monologue of iambic pentameter