Tennyson and the Doom of Romanticism by Herbert F. Tucker (review)

Book Reviews267 the serious scholar. Three authors are Native Americans, providing an insider view of their subjects. A detailed index allows access to material by tribe and culture and geography, to topics and themes, to authors and titles. And the editors , dividing their work into two main sections, each in two subsections, use a dualistic structure that in itself adds a certain sense of Native American authenticity. PATRICK E. LEE College of Great FalL· HERBERT F. TUCKER. Tennyson and the Doom ofRomanticism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988. 481 p. This study manifests much background research. Incorporated into its 434 pages of text are frequent references to nearly 300 sources exclusive of Tennyson's own writings. Tucker cites some general studies of Victorian England but focuses on specialized examinations of the poet's work. His goal: "to tell the story of the life in Tennyson's texts to midcareer, and thereby to practice specifically literary biography" (9). He combines history and exegesis to explain Tennyson's poetry, not his life. His motive: to help counter what he sees as a disfigurement in the modern reaction to literary history and, especially, to Tennyson and his art. The book has two parts, the first examining the poetry written up to 1832, the second, the poetry of the years 1833 to 1855. In chapter 1, "The Measure ofDoom," Tucker outlines his ideas; in the other five chapters, he applies those ideas to close reading ofspecific poems. The key term, doom, refers to the author's view that the Romantics characteristically explored the causes and consequences of a lost sense of self that they were doomed to experience, given their perspectives . Tennyson, writing when he did, was "doomed" to work in the Romantic tradition. Yet, because he temperamentally found Romantic doom congenial rather than struggling against it openly, "his work was also the doom ofRomanticism " (29). Ideally, his readers were to respond to his implicit sense of "an inconsolable loss beyond words, a content irreducible to form, and at the same time to a polished style offering a genuine consolation of its own, a reassuring message independent of substantial reference" (26). Tucker finds a legitimizing profundity within Tennyson, due to that very absence of substantial reference in the poetry, which he divides into earlier lyrics , including the "classical monologues," and the later idylls, including, in essence, In Memoriam and Maud. Despite reassuring messages, the doom remains . In the former, it involves aspiring beyond a human, but limiting, context . In the latter, the individual accepts an apparently fulfilling social context that, as Tucker interprets Tennyson's portrayal of it, creates a necessary subliminal unease. 268Rocky Mountain Review Agreeing with some of this book's premises can change one's responses to Tennyson's poetry, the cynical growing less so, the warmly enthusiastic feeling a corrective chill. Tucker's readings do not always convince one, but they do give pause. Other, less happy pauses arise from the book's length (reducing the subjective , occasionally effusive analyses ofTennyson's artistic strategies would help, particularly in the section on the juvenilia), from the playful but excessive use of puns (some bad), and from using literary allusions for their phrasing, only. One tends to grow impatient with these distractions. Still, such idiosyncrasies could be seen as the life in Tucker's book, accompanying his success in finding new vitality and profundity in Tennyson's texts. That one remains unsure about whether or not Tennyson himself sensed the implications Tucker discovers could be an argument for Tucker's approach. He admits, reluctantly, that one might prefer to keep some skepticism about Tennyson , the poet and man, in reserve. DALE K. BOYER Boise State University GEZA VON MOLNÁR. Romantic Vision, Ethical Context: Novalis and Artistic Autonomy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. 247 p. The epigraph by Georg Lukács succinctly expresses the objective which the author had in mind when writing this study; he wanted to document that "Novalis is the only true poet of the Romantic school. In him alone the whole soul of Romanticism turned to song, and only he expressed nothing but that soul." Novalis is no longer presented in such traditional terms as "The Poet of...