Tennysons Use of Landscape as an Indication of Mood :: essays research papers

Tennysons poetry is renowned for reflecting a penetrating introspection and brooding expressiveness unsurpassed by other poets of his time. His explorations into a vast breadth of topics ranging from the political to the deeply personal reflect his multifarious enthusiasms, and his ability to reach bring out to his readers as well as probe the depths of psychological expression. The Lady of Shalott and Mariana, twain of his earliest poems, exemplify this ability to communicate internal states of sense by and through his use of scenery.Although Tennysons use of landscape indeed creates a fuddled vivid impression, I feel that it also serves a higher invention namely, to express the psychological state and mood depicted in the protagonists of the poems.As a child Tennyson was profoundly influenced by the poetry of Byron and Scott, Romantic poets famed for their presentations of emotional or psychological issues through natural imagery. This influence jakes be plainly seen in hi s poetry, none so much so as in Mariana where he uses Keatsian descriptions of the surroundings to describe a adult females state of mind. The subject of this poem is drawn from a telegraph wire in Shakespeares Measure for Measure Mariana in the moated grange. This describes a young woman waiting for her lover Angelo, who has tatterdemalion her upon the loss of her dowry. From the low Tennyson creates an impression of profound disrepair and decrepitude, the sheds are left hand broken and abandoned, the thatch is worn-out and covered in weeds. Everything is coated in rust, moss or dust, unmoving, inactive and still. This operose suggestion of stagnation recurs throughout, and is emphasized by the refrain of the poem She plainly said, My life is dreary, He cometh not, she said, She said, I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were beat(p)This acts almost as a confirmation of what the reader already suspects, that Mariana has been abandoned and the grange with her, and expresses continuity without hope of change. His use of adjectives such as lonely, antediluvian, level and old throughout the poem poignantly express disrepair and isolation. This smell out of dormancy Tennyson depicts draws a direct correlation with the psychological state of mind expressed in Mariana. He uses her surroundings to echo the fact that she is left in a constant state of perpetual, isolated brooding and that through her dejection all she sees appears equally miserable and dreary.