Course Details

Many of us, when we think of Victorian literature, think of the great big Victorian novel. But poetry did not disappear with the Romantics. Tennyson's poetry, especially Idylls of the King, was highly popular with Victorian readers, and rightly so. This study group is offered to give us a chance to enjoy Tennyson once more. Background, context, and overview will be provided by the study group leader, but members should be willing to choose several passages of roughly 25-100 lines to read aloud in class. We will look at Tennyson's lyricism, word-painting and use of blank verse, of course. But his handling of the Arthurian legends, and the meaning of the legends themselves, will be our main focus.