Tennyson's, 'In Memoriam', can't quite get my head around it.

[ammelou]

Hi,

This is my first post here and honestly my reasons for coming here are those which I swore I would never fall foul of, however I am here to shamelessly ask for help.

Please don't judge me, this time of year is rough :)

I'm a third year student of English Literature and my lecturer has assigned the following:

How is Tennyson's, 'In Memoriam', relevant to, local and/or global environmental crisis and change in the present era?

Any insight into this, no need for detail, if I could just get some sort of pointer I may be able to take it from there, but right now I am so lost. Help?

[Jackson Richardson]

Good luck. I have a suspicion this is trying to find contemporary concerns in a work where the culture of the time just didn't see life in those sort of terms.

My recollection is that the poem is trying desperately to find meaning for individual human life in the face of mortality and the potentially inhumane nature of the world - I'm thinking of the passages about Darwin and "nature red in tooth and claw".

Mind you, my favourite passage - Calm and deep peace on this high wold - is ambiguous. The peace and beauty of nature could be a consolation to the bereaved poet, but it could also show the indifference of nature to individual human life.

I suspect the Victorians were too busy exploiting nature to be concerned about current environmental concerns.

I haven't read the whole poem for a long time (and when I did I couldn't follow some of the arguments) but I suspect the short answer to the question "How is it relevant" is "Not much".

[Jackson Richardson]

Come on, can't someone else chime in a bit more helpfully?

[Albion]

This is a contrived task designed merely to test our capability to reason with reference to a poem irrelevant to the subject given.
But perhaps one could find a link to our inability to face impending disaster:

The obsession with a brief period of life that cannot be renewed or revived
The sense that the past has irretrievably flown away
The morbid acceptance of death
The passivity of the speaker
The approach of the ship bearing Arthur’s coffin could suggest an acceptance of impending disaster
The dying of the old year (the only stanza with any optimism)

[sandy14]

you may need to explore the romantic version of nature espoused by Tennyson and look at current attitude to nature and go from there.

Just quickly looking 4th stanza from last

Of those that, eye to eye, shall look
On knowledge; under whose command
Is Earth and Earth's, and in their hand
Is Nature like an open book;

Note - Tennyson uses Nature as a proper noun - this means he is talking about Nature as a diety or religion, rather than the stuff that happens in a forest. There is a spiritual dimension to Tennyson's nature. Is there a spiritual dimension now? Certainly with the Gia movement and versions of new paganism there is a concept of nature which links to environmentalism. also Nature like an open book - what is this open book telling us? Our governments have just signed an environmental deal to prevent global warming. Perhaps something could be made of that. In RRomanticism Nature is something to be contemplated and somehow nature and natures laws will be revealed. With our current environmentalism it is based upon scientific observation which is contemplating nature, but perhaps using a different eye.