11: Ulysses paragraphs

Here are the paragraphs we wrote in class today.

The thesis:

Tennyson’s theme is that life ought to be lived on the edge of experience and existing knowledge because death is inevitable. This theme is developed through the use of allusion, other figurative language, imagery, and meter and rhythm.

A paragraph on allusion:

Tennyson uses allusion as a way of discuss his concept of life and death. The entire poem is an allusion to Ulysses, the epic Greek hero. Ulysses makes reference to Troy, Hyades and other elements of The Odyssey as a way of reminding us of his past exploits, with which Tennyson assumes we are familiar. However, Tennyson’s poem is set after the end of The Odyssey, and the narrator is an aging Ulysses, wondering about his future. The allusion ends up being ironic. The UYS of The Odyssey is defiant of death and takes each adventure as it comes. He rarely thinks about the future or the quality of life to which he will return. On the other hand, the speaker Tennyson presents is discontent with his life as ‘an idle king,’ thinking about death, shown through the diction with which he speaks. As a result, Tennyson appropriates the mythological allusion of Ulysses to make the statement about death and life more obvious.

And about meter:

Tennyson also uses meter as a way of emphasizing elements of what he considers the good life and the awareness of death. The poem is written in iambic pentameter, appropriate for a poem about an epic figure. However, he manipulates the meter to emphasize certain words related to the theme. In line 8, for instance, the word ‘greatly’ appears twice, in a parallel structure, and each time the trochaic nature of the word interrupts the blank verse, emphasizing the concept of greatness. Tennyson wants us to think of the greatness of the times that have passed for UYS, which he is discussing at this point, and contrast them with the present time, which is ‘idle’ and ‘still’ (1, 2).