As a poet laureate, Tennyson made himself the spokesperson of the glory of his period. "Ulysses" can be said to be a poem praising the triumphant ascendancy of his era. However, when we bid farewell to the Victorain era and move forward to the 20th century, we can detect the changing view of history in many modernist poems, for example, in W. B. Yeats's "Leda and the Swan" or "The Second Coming."
Compare and contrast Tennyson's "Ulysses" and Yeats's "Leda and the Swan" (or "The Second Coming"). Describe their different views of history as demonstrated in their poems.
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While Tennyson mainly focuses on the past, Yeats pays most of his attention to the future.
In “Ulysses” the poem, Tennyson uses Ulysses the character to symbolize how great and awesome the past is. As Ulysses gets bored by just sitting on his throne almost all day, he cherishes the memory of adventure and conquest on the sea and intends to sail out to the sea again for more excitement. Due to Ulysses’s desire of conquering men, sea, and achieving more knowledge, it seems that the poem itself clearly contains the element of “imperialism”.
As for Yeats, both of his poems “The Second Coming” and “Leda and the Swan” have concerns on the future. In “The Second Coming”, with uses of biblical examples such as “revelation” and “second coming”, Yeats somehow “predicts” that the world would suffer various disasters and calamities. In fact, he is exaggerating as if “the end of the world” will come and everybody will die. For “Leda and the Swan”, by using “the destruction of Troy” and the “death of Agamemnon” as supporting points, Yeats states the swan’s “shudder” on the terrified girl would lead to a tragic future.
In conclusion, while Tennyson glorifies the deeds, events, and anything exciting in the past, Yeats shows his anxiety toward the future that it might leads to a circumstance with more blood and violence. As a result, each of these two poets has his own different view on history.
We could see from the time when two poems were to be written down that they are saying different stories about what people had been interested in.
In the old age like Tennyson, they liked to say things about how legendary a ruler was or the embition he had,and also honored everything that's about gods; unlike Tennyson, there was a big break throughs in Yeats' period of time, he changed the way of interpreting the gods, and the poem was also strong, short and bold.
As for Tennyson, we may feel a sence of flattering to the ruler in his poem, and a bit verbose. To say it in a better way, it's kind of a way to make the king feel happy, after all, he's a Poet laureate~
From these two different ways of explaining the history events, we could see how we've changed our mind into something that's innovative.
Although both Tennyson and Yeats used historical stories, their aims were totally different.
In the poem “Ulysses,” Tennyson adopted the Ulysses’ bored life after his sailing adventurous stories. He portrayed how dull and tedious life Ulysses was fed up with and how he yearned for voyaging again. Ulysses could not tolerate that he sat on the throne all day long; instead, he had to sail. It is well-kwon that Tennyson was in the Victorian era. Queen Victoria propagated how mighty England was at that time by expanding their colonies. It shows that Tennyson advocated imperialism.
However, Yeats wanted to reveal that capitalism and industry had destroyed the human and natural world in his poem “The Second Coming.” He could not expect that what a great thing will be in the future. Yeats depicted that the order of the universe had messed up and that object troubling his sight may be a pitiless, merciless Sphinx.
In conclusion, Tennyson used history to express that the sun never sets on the British Empire; Yeats used history to convey his sadness to the world.
Yeats and Tennyson used the mythology and bible stories to wrote the poems, but the stories element are opposite from original stories. Yeats and Tennyson used ironic ways to discribed everything in the poems also give reader different images, for instance, Leda and the Swan,
actually swan in the poem supposed to be a pure and beautiful animal, but Yeats discribed as a beast trying to rape a girl; a cruel and violent animal. Also, Tennyson discribed that the Odysseus is not a homesick person, and tried to escape from Greek.
Yeats and Tennyson din't used beautiful sentences in this two poems. My opinion is Yeats and Tennyson trying to give us a sense that everything is not simple and easy, maybe some stories are not telling the truth. Yeat and Tennyson are full of imaginations poets, therefore they can write poems different from other poets.
Victorians tended to read "Ulysses" pretty straightforwardly, as an avowal of faith in the necessity of striving ever onward.
However, in "Leda and Swan",the W.B. Yeats desecribe this poem with two elements ,violence and helplessness, using modern way to present a mythology.
Both two authors describe the tales out of mythology, but former in victorian way, the latter in modern way.
Modern way tends to use different views combining new thoughts to see things from various perspects
what's more, the modern way seems to be familiar to me and more vigorous.
I think the most important idea when valuing history is that there is actually no right or wrong. What people do is simply showing the reflection of thier era whatever we might consider it wrong or weird in our time. So in such case, Tennyson is living in such a unique era and country. When looking through all the history before him, there is no such empire could conquer such immense lands. Ofcourse he would admire his own country and praise it by the form of art. I think we could also praise him as one of the best poet who praises their country. Actually he is praised by people of his time because of the same reason.
And about Yeats, I think he is unique because of the diferent point of view he has in his era.
He is one of the intellectuals that concerns about the people who are oppressed.And I think he alredy showed his concern in the poem of "Leda and the swan".
In “Ulysess”, Tennyson praises the great power of the leader in his country. Ulysess is described as an ambitious man willing to control the world like the reflection of Great Britain. In another hand, “Leda and the swan” presents a victim under authority’s savage treatment and thus affects to a bad result as Trojan War.
In "Ulysses" the poem, imperialism is strongly praised by Tennyson. The poet preached overseas expansion, which you can take the imperialism in this poem as a challenge to the limit or a adventure. However, this ambition including invasion and strike is aggressive. Moreover, the white superiority is also exposed to this poem; they want to strive, to seek, to subdue.
On the contrary, "Leda and the Swan" shows Yeats' animadversion of the cycle of history. In this poem, the history isn't glorious; conversely, it's tragical and violent. We also can see the Leda's helplessness. It seems that the cycle of history is filled with violence, tragedy and trauma.
Due to the author lives in different periods of time, their perspective and creative to the poem is contrast.
In the poem "Ulysses" the author shape a different point of views to the reader. He subverts the traditional ways that Ulysses urgently desires toward his homeland. However, instead of going home, Ulysses wants to expand his territory and subdue all the nations. He is not tired of his long way drifting on the sea. In his ambition, He wants to conquer more and more country. Based on the author’s background, he uses the similar thought to the time of Victorian. In the time of Victorian, She wants to put her imperialist ambition to all over the world.
In the poem "Leda and the Swan" W.B Yeats uses symbolic ways to describe the collapse of western civilization. For example, Leda was raped by the Swan which was transformed by Zeus. She can’t escape from his violent conducts. She is helpless in this kind of conditions. However, the author compares this situation to the breakout of the world war one. After going through the world war one, the vulnerable and powerless of this poem can represent the mood of people who have experienced world war one.
The different view of history to those two poems is based on different poet. Ulysses is the production of Tennyson. Tennyson lived in 19th century and he also was a British man. In this Victorian era, most people were confidential to their nation, the empire which the sun would never set down. In this poem, Ulysses, the poet demonstrated the ambition to conquer other countries and exalted his nation for those conquered deed.
The other poem is Leda and the swan and the poet is W.B Yeats. The situation which Yeats stayed is full of depressed and disheartened. After the World War I, many well educated people worried about the future of the whole world. Yeats was the one of them and he want to use his poem to evoke people. In the poem Leda and the swan, the poet tried to use the ancient Greek mythology to explain or to renew their view about those artificial disasters. Yeats used his poem to make a deep introspection about this catastrophe and discuss the way to renew the world.
In the mythology, Ulysses is a big hero. He defeats the monster, conquer the witch so forth. Bit in Tennyson’s “Ulysses”, he becomes so avaricious and likes to violate other spaces. He also represents the imperialism, like today’s USA. He starts to hate his people and his wife. He is so arrogant still and has the ambition of challenge…
Besides, the swan is so graceful and beauty. But In the “Leda and the swan”, the swan uses his violent to the sexual penetration. Use the power to surrender the victim. Leaving the seed of human’s violent in the history. The second coming, the thing appear after 2000 years is not god instead of that, it appear the sphinx,
To sum up, Tennyson and w.b Yeats do not want to follow normal people’s thought. They like to hump out of the frame of common people.
In my opinion, Tennyson and W. B. Yeats are representing the different views of history about the civilization.
The poetry of Tennyson presents us with the promising period of the United Kingdom, the Victorian era. In the epoch that the raising sun never sets on the British Empire, the speaker in Tennyson’s poems usually conveys the confidence of the civilization state. What’s more, some ideas are so mental superior to the “uncivilized places”. In the poem “Ulysses”, Tennyson used some adjective to describe the territory and the people which were controlled by Ulysses, such as “barren”, “savage” and “rugged” are slightly give the readers some clues of the colonial mentality.
As for W. B. Yeast’s "Leda and the Swan", he transformed the mythology between Leda and Zeus from a romance to a self-reflection of the civilization, how come the godlike “knowledge” lead to “the brute blood of the air”, the World War I? Do we become more knowledgeable during so many bloody histories? To sum up, he wants to predict the future by reviewing the past, and contemplate the reason why the violent seeds bury in the genes of human beings.
About the "The Second Coming " contains some images of the twentieth century. In the poem, some interpretations referred to the traditional ruling classes of Europe. Yeats wrote "The Second Coming "while Europe and much of the world was trying to recover from World War I. This was surely an important factor for him in writing the poem. Yeats saw great social troubles all around him, and remarks on a world spinning out of control. He wrote poems that had questions of history and identity.
Compared to the poem "Ulysses" Tennyson reflects the Victorian period of his maturity in his feeling and towards moralizing and self-indulgent melancholy. it is popularly used to illustrate the dramatic monologue poetic form. For most of this poem's history, readers can view Ulysses as resolute and heroic character. In this poem, Ulysses has returned to his kingdom and portrayed how bored life he do not like. He longs for further experience and knowledge. It shows that the author puts his t ambition to this poem.
Both of Tennyson and Yeats use mythology to describe their poems. For Tennyson, the Ulysses myth reflects to some degree his own desire to get over his friend’s death and keep living, and it wasn’t enough for him to achieve a state of ease and tranquility. He also wanted to keep living life and took both its ups and downs in stride in the same way as Ulysses. Indeed, Tennyson famously claimed that the poem described in part his own "need of going forward and braving the struggle of life" after his friend's death.
On the other hands, Yeats presents this tale in a relatively graphic way, so modern readers may find the language disturbing. Stories about sex with animals were fairly common in classical societies like Ancient Greece, and the myth of Leda and the swan was once well known. His poem makes dramatic reference to the destruction of Troy, and he would also have been familiar with the many artistic depictions of the story of Leda and the swan.
In Ulysses it reveals the point that in Victoria generation people wanted to outspread their enclave in the poem we can see after Ulysses came back home he soon went out to outspread another space. In Yeats’ poem, he inquest the Caesarism he use Zeus to figure like a droit du seigneur and many women that have sex with him was figure like the colonies.
In the we can think about is it correct to outspread the space.
Tennyson and W.B. Yeats lived in the different eras and therefore their views towards history are dislike. Return to the historical background, Tennyson’s “Ulysses” was written in 1833, the time after Industrial Revolution, while W.B. Yeats’ “Leda and the Swan” was accomplished in 1923 after the World War I.
In nineteenth century, it was a time that every western country sought for expansions, especially with the help of compass, gunpowder, and advanced weapons, they could easily invade other countries. These western countries were New Imperialism and through invasions these countries thought that they were superior to other undeveloped countries.
However, after World War I, the whole world was in miseries and no countries wanted to expand their territories any more. None of these western countries was the winner of the war; instead, they were losers and needed to recover from the upset atmosphere. For example, in line ten “The broken wall, the burning roof and tower / And Agamemnon dead” suggested the fall of Troy and symbolized the terrible human history. The title of the poem implied violence by Zeus’ form of the swan to rape Leda and thus the seed of violence has grown in human being’s minds.
From the two poems, with their historical backgrounds, we can perceive the changing views of history.
In Ulysses it reveals the point that in Victoria generation people wanted to outspread their enclave in the poem we can see after Ulysses came back home he soon went out to outspread another space. In Yeats’ poem, he inquest the Caesarism he use Zeus to figure like a droit du seigneur and many women that have sex with him was figure like the colonies.
In the poem the poet use those figures to let us think about is that acted correct or not.
The tone of these two poems are quiet different. The reason is that the authors of the poems have different background. Tennyson is a British who lived in the 19th century. As people know, he is a Victorian poet. He tends to use language that is poetic and delicate. Compare with Tennyson’s poem, the language of “ Leda and Swan ” is modern. W.B Yeats is a poet who went through the World War I. “ Leda and Swan” talks about the collapse of western civilization. The style of this poem is dark and gloomy. To sum up, these two poems have great difference in style and tone.
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