Alfred Tennyson

Mariana

• pub. 1830
• held by Armstrong 1993 to be paradigmatic example of the Victorian "double-poem," in which "the poetic work invites us to consider its expressive lyric utterance [its subject] as itself 'the object of analysis and critique'" ( LaPorte 2016 38).

The poignant expression of exclusion to which Mariana's state gives rise, and which is reiterated in the marking of barriers - the moat itself, the gate with clinking latch, and curtained casement, the hinged doors - is simultaneously an analysis of the hypersensitive hysteria induced by the coercion of sexual taboo. These are hymenal taboos, which Mariana is induced, by a cultural consensus that is hidden from her, to experience as her own condition. Hidden from her, but not from the poem, the barriers are man-made, cunningly constructed through the material fabric of the house she inhabits, the enclosed space in which she is confined. It is the narrative voice which describes these spaces, not Mariana as speaker. (13)

• self-reflexivity in the repetitions: e.g., Keats's "The Eve of St. Agnes" is less self-consciously a work of Romantic medievalism
• enclosure is narrated, anguish is uttered by Mariana

Tithonus

• First published in Cornhill after #2 of Framley Parsonage (Anthony Trollope, 1861); Ricks quotes a letter from Tennyson: "My friend Thackeray and his publishers had been so urgent with me to sent them something, that I ferreted among my old books and found this Tithonus, written upwards of a quarter of a century ago..." (Tennyson ed. Ricks 1112)
• #2 of FP (February 1860, vol 1 ch. 4-6) framed by Thomas Hood's "To Goldenhair (from Horace)" and, most interestingly, Tennyson's "Tithonus" after ch. 6, when Harold Smith is lecturing about "civilizing" Papua New Guinea and making a satirical point about the tension between church and civilization:

"Oh, civilization! thou that ennoblest mankind and makest him equal to the gods, what is like unto thee?" Here Mrs. Proudie showed evident signs of disapprobation, which no doubt would have been shared by th bishop, had not that worthy prelate been asleep. But Mr. Smith continued unobservant; or at any rate, regardless. (173 Cornhill, ~58 in Oxford)

• • Gives a different gloss to "The Gods themselves cannot recall their gifts" in "Tithonus"
    • "Tithonus" followed by an essay about Hogarth ("William Hogarth: painter, engraver, philosopher (Part I)") by George Augustus Sala