Tolkien and Tennyson
Mar. 11th, 2007 09:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tree_and_leafI was listening to Radio 3's Drama on 3, which consisted of dramatised readings of Tennyson's sea poetry - largely because of the sheer brilliance of the acapella/ folk trio Coope, Boyes and Simpson, who were singing sea songs (much as I love Tennyson, I find Enoch Arden rather tiresome)
The play, if that's what you'd call it, concluded with Crossing the Bar, and though the later literary reference this usually throws up for me is 'Anne of the Island', it suddenly struck me that this voyage into death is really rather like the voyage from the Grey Havens into the West.
Well - I'm not claiming it as a direct influence; in any case both of them are playing with (a) a fairly natural metaphor and (b) a number of older images, such as the voyage of S Brendan, that Breton legend about the ferryman who took the dead in his boat to Little Britain, and, I bet, also the ship of souls in Dante's Purgatory (which is itself riffing on similar voyages, most noticably as a blessed counterpart to Charon's boat, though here a sea under God's good heaven replaces the underworld river).
And maybe I should stop typing/ free associating.... I have an interview for a scholarship tomorrow, and I've also just finished redrafting a thesis chapter - though I bet my supervisor will still think the conclusion is too 'preachy'. Sigh.
The play, if that's what you'd call it, concluded with Crossing the Bar, and though the later literary reference this usually throws up for me is 'Anne of the Island', it suddenly struck me that this voyage into death is really rather like the voyage from the Grey Havens into the West.
Well - I'm not claiming it as a direct influence; in any case both of them are playing with (a) a fairly natural metaphor and (b) a number of older images, such as the voyage of S Brendan, that Breton legend about the ferryman who took the dead in his boat to Little Britain, and, I bet, also the ship of souls in Dante's Purgatory (which is itself riffing on similar voyages, most noticably as a blessed counterpart to Charon's boat, though here a sea under God's good heaven replaces the underworld river).
And maybe I should stop typing/ free associating.... I have an interview for a scholarship tomorrow, and I've also just finished redrafting a thesis chapter - though I bet my supervisor will still think the conclusion is too 'preachy'. Sigh.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-12 10:53 am (UTC)I love Crossing the Bar - I don't see how Tolkien could have escaped it at a pretty early age with his education, even if he wasn't personally fond of Tennyson (no idea if this was the case). It seems to have been a fasionable genre (http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/491.html).
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-12 12:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-12 02:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-12 03:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-12 06:14 pm (UTC)On the subejct of Crossing the Bar, I have a vague memory of it set as a hymn in the old Church of Scotland hymnbook. (That bit out of In Memoriam about 'Our little systems have their day" is also in the New English Hymnbook, oddly enough, though I can't find it at the moment)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-12 10:14 pm (UTC)That motif would be an interesting subject for an article, for anyone doing Eng Lit.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-13 01:39 pm (UTC)That occurred to me, alas, after I got my lowest mark on my Victorians paper. I ought to do some English research again, really, if just for fun.