Murmurs in the Foliaged Eaves: A Critical Analysis of the Role of Nature in the Achievement of Consolation in Tennyson's "In Memoriam"

Abstract

In Memoriam, a one hundred thirty-one section poem by Lord Alfred Tennyson, has been acclaimed one of the most outstanding poems of the Victorian period. Begun as an elegy to Arthur Henry Hallam, Tennyson's most treasured friend who died suddenly in Vienna in 1833, the poem almost immediately overflows the traditional definitions of the form and expands into an agonized search for faith and hope in a generation besiged by scientific opposition. More a philosophical than a religious poem, it does however center on the poet's struggle to retain faith as he searches for the meaning of death and life through the contexts of Christianity and science.