Hussain

Hussain

  • Submitted By: rulerofevil
  • Date Submitted: 03/01/2009 5:53 AM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 988
  • Page: 4
  • Views: 312

Ulysses "Ulysses" is a poem in blank verse by the Victorian poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892), written in 1833 and published in 1842 in Tennyson's well-received second volume of poems. An oft-quoted poem, it is popularly used to illustrate the dramatic monologue poetic form. In the poem, Ulysses describes, to an unspecified audience, his discontent and restlessness upon returning to his kingdom, Ithaca, after his far-ranging travels. Facing old age, Ulysses yearns to explore again, despite his reunion with his wife Penelope and son Telemachus. The character of Ulysses (Greek: Odysseus) has been explored widely in literature. The adventures of Odysseus were first recorded in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey (c. 800–700 BC), and Tennyson draws on Homer's narrative in the poem; most critics, however, find that Tennyson's Ulysses recalls the character Ulisse in Dante's Inferno (c. 1320). In Dante's re-telling, Ulisse is condemned to hell among the false counselors, both for his pursuit of knowledge beyond human bounds and for his adventures in disregard of his family. For most of this poem's history, readers viewed Ulysses as resolute and heroic, admiring him for his determination "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield”. The view that Tennyson intended a heroic character is supported by his statements about the poem, and by the events in his life—the death of his closest friend—that prompted him to write it. In the twentieth century, new interpretations of "Ulysses" highlight potential ironies in the poem. They argue, for example, that Ulysses wishes to selfishly abandon his kingdom and family, and they question Ulysses' character by demonstrating how he resembles flawed protagonists in earlier literature. As the poem begins, Ulysses has returned to his kingdom, Ithaca, having had a long, eventful journey home after fighting in the Trojan War. Confronted again by domestic life, Ulysses expresses his lack of contentment, including his indifference toward the...

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