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The document provides analysis of three poems by Alfred Tennyson: "Ulysses", "The Lady of Shalott", and "The Lotos-Eaters". "Ulysses" describes the title character's dissatisfaction with retirement and desire to continue adventuring. "The Lady of Shalott" focuses on a woman isolated on an island who sees Camelot. "The Lotos-Eaters" tells of mariners who eat the drug-induced lotus plant and lose their will to return home. The document discusses themes of isolation versus community and interpretations of characters' psychology in Tennyson's poems.
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- 1. \" Ulysses\" details Ulysses' intense dissatisfaction and boredom on his island home of Ithaca. The poem is a monologue spoken by him, where he not only expresses his discontent, but also describes his desire to keep sailing. He's getting older and doesn't have a lot of time left, so he wants to get busy living rather than busy dying. The poem concludes with his resolution to \" strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.\" The poem begins by telling us that a king gains nothing from just sitting around by the fire with his wife and making laws for people who don't even know him. The view that Tennyson intended an heroic character is supported by his statements about the poem, and by the events in his lifethe death of his closest friendthat prompted him to write it. In the twentieth century, some new interpretations of \" Ulysses\" highlighted potential ironies in the poem. They argued, for example, that Ulysses wishes to selfishly abandon his kingdom and family, and they questioned more positive assessments of Ulysses' character by demonstrating how he resembles flawed protagonists in earlier literature.<br />Alfred Tennyson's poem \" The Lady of Shalott\" focuses on a woman who is living alone on a small island in the middle of a river. This island, called Shalott, is within eyesight of the storied city of Camelot. The river itself flows straight into and through Camelot. It would be rather preposterous<br />to claim to be able to contribute new insights in the study of Tennysons works on this<br />background and my motivation is another: I have always enjoyed reading Tennyson and this is the perfect opportunity to work with one of my personal favourites. The critical production on Tennyson is enormous and awe-inspiring. In relation to The Lady of Shalott, the view seems widely held that the poem has qualities even though there are rather diverse ideas of what these qualities consist of.<br />http://rudar.ruc.dk/bitstream/1800/972/1/synopsis%20final.pdf<br />These men on coming among the Lotos-eaters were kindly entertained by them and were given some of their own food, the lotos plant, to eat. The effect of this food was such that those who partook of it lost all thought of home and wished to remain in that country. It was by main force that Ulysses dragged these men away, and he was even obliged to tie them under the benches of his ship. Tennyson in The Lotos-eaters has fittingly expressed the dreamy, languid feeling which the lotus-food is said to have produced. Ah! what a pleasure it is to read this poem...so wonderfully visual, so wonderfully audible...the music flows over you and mesmerizes you. Looking into the content you find a wealth of meaning hidden behind these cute little rhymes. Man keeps getting born into this world, but he goes away after his destined timespan. The poem discusses the tension between isolation and being a member of a community, which also involves the reader of the poem. In the song, there are many images that are supposed to appeal to the reader. This allows for a sympathy with the mariners. When the mariners ask why everything else besides them are allowed peace, it is uncertain as to whether they are asking about humanity in general or only about their own state of being.<br />http://www.2020site.org/ulysses/lotus.html<br />