Tennyson and the Revision of Song

Writing in the 1890s, in an early account of Tennyson’s poetry, the Victorian anthologist F. T. Palgrave was keen to maintain the myth of the spontaneous singer. ‘More than once’, he recorded, Tennyson’s ‘poems sprang’ from a ‘nucleus’, ‘a brief melodious phrase’ or ‘song’, which, if not transcribed immediately, ‘fled from him irrecoverably’. It has long been the case with poets of ‘lyrics’ and ‘songs’ that their skills have been depicted as improvisatory, fleeting, or inspired. Their skills have been understood, variously, as indicative either of the most dexterous of intellects, or of brilliant but uncontrolled visions, a ‘flash’ of prophetic insight or revelation – a feel of what Shelley likens to ‘the interpenetration of a diviner nature through our own’. For many poets, however, the reality is one of inspiration that gives birth to intense manuscript activity and revision. It is now well known that Tennyson revised and re-revised, even after publication, until only weeks before his death; and yet no book-length study has pursued the significance of his manuscript revisions for the development of his style. This thesis traces the poet’s stylistic evolution through his notebooks, drafts, and printed volumes. Uncovering new literary manuscripts from Harvard, Lincoln, Cambridge, and New York, the study offers a more comprehensive picture of the poet’s craft: one alert to his evolving ambitions, and to the immense shifts that he effected in the landscape of English verse.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2017

Author dc:creator

• Sullivan, Michael Joseph Plygawko

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Leighton, Angela

• Alfred Tennyson
• manuscripts
• revision
• poetic form
• song
• lyric
• The Golden Treasury
• In Memoriam
• The Princess
• Poems Chiefly Lyrical
• Palgrave
• Wordsworth
• anthologies
• Nineteenth Century
• Victorian
• Romantic

Statement dc:rights

• Permanent embargo: contains quotations from unpublished manuscripts.

Licence

• https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/21c2c01c-c2fb-4a25-b9e4-0279320c3a0b/download
• https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/

Language dc:language

en

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.18739

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/271748