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Tennyson's Maud: A Reexamination of its Biographical Genesis and Aesthetic Merits

O’Neill, James N.
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1566297715170688

Abstract Details

1975, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, English.
This dissertation reexamines Maud's experiential elements and reconsiders whether Tennyson's poem is seriously marred by its personal matrix. It appraises a number of conclusions about the nature of Maud's aesthetic merits arrived at in Ralph Rader's important biographical account of the composition of Tennyson's poem. In his work Rader contends that Maud is flawed by a "hidden emotional dimension" which results from Tennyson's inability to distance himself sufficiently from the emotional experiences about which he was writing. Rader believes that "the emotion which flows from the frenetic hero is distorted and disproportionate to its objects as they appear in the poem." This study confirms that Maud is, indeed, a mosaic-like rendering of Tennyson's first forty-five years. In Maud Tennyson does seem to have made use of the complex of psychological wounds he had sustained during his rural childhood years and post-Somersby relocating and recasting years. However, this study disputes the claim that Tennyson was unable to distance himself sufficiently from the emotional experiences about which he was writing. The poet's frame of mind at Chapel House and Farringford between 1851 and 1855 was sufficiently serene for him to embark upon the composition of Maud with a sense of financial independence and emotional security. Finally, this study contends that Maud's emotional element is neither unconscious nor uncontrolled. The emotional element in the poem's sections of social invective does seem consciously employed when one considers how Tennyson's hero is deliberately fashioned after the conventional Spasmodic protagonist. Similarly, the emotional element in Maud's war passages seems purposeful and regulated when one recognizes how the advocacy of war can be understood as the speaker's ardent desire for his country to cease its internal selfishness and divisiveness by turning its energies outward to the earning of a true peace.
Thomas L. Wymer (Advisor)
British and Irish Literature

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • O’Neill, J. N. (1975). Tennyson's Maud: A Reexamination of its Biographical Genesis and Aesthetic Merits [Doctoral dissertation, Bowling Green State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1566297715170688

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • O’Neill, James. Tennyson's Maud: A Reexamination of its Biographical Genesis and Aesthetic Merits. 1975. Bowling Green State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1566297715170688.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • O’Neill, James. "Tennyson's Maud: A Reexamination of its Biographical Genesis and Aesthetic Merits." Doctoral dissertation, Bowling Green State University, 1975. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1566297715170688

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

bgsu1566297715170688
819
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