• Tennyson
• Linda K. Hughes (bio)

No book-length study of Alfred Tennyson appeared during 2022, but The Crimean War in Victorian Poetry by Tai-Chun Ho (Peter Lang, 2021) offers sustained engagement with Tennyson’s poetry. This sociohistorical, intertextual literary study considers the troubled role of the noncombatant poet (or “armchair” poet) in an era of war correspondents, telegraphs, and mass print. Faced with current reports of Crimean troubles on one hand, Victorian poets faced on the other their legacy of war poetry, including the Iliad, that glorified war and heroism. Poets who invoked glory or patriotism while sitting snugly at home when British soldiers far from home faced inadequate supply chains, insufficient medical attendance, and officers’ blunders could invite condemnation. Yet realist representations of soldiers’ suffering in war could repel or distress prospective readers. Ho’s achievement, which builds on earlier studies by Stefanie Markovits and Trudi Tate, is to set these questions in a broad poetic as well as transmedial context that illuminates evolving traditions of war poetry as well as Tennyson’s own diction and perspectives. Ho claims the [End Page 407] status of double poems for much of what he examines, since Victorian war poetry presented “the armchair poet’s struggle to voice the unspeakable and to depict a war that was being reported in newspapers” while also incorporating “a socio-political critique that require[d] the reader to explore the dramatized speaker’s engagement with the conflict as an object of analysis” (p. 45).

Ho sets the stage by examining the Tyrtaean tradition of war poetry, so named from Tyrtaeus, the Spartan warrior poet. Thomas Campbell’s translation of Tyrtaeus’s martial elegy opens, “How glorious fall the valiant, sword in hand, / In front of battle for their native land!” (p. 219). These lines are echoed, Ho suggests in chapter 5, in Tennyson’s monodrama, when the speaker describes Maud’s military ballad—an echo likely recognized by Tennyson’s readers. Newspaper poems by civilian poets Tom Taylor, Louisa Shore, and Tennyson shifted war poetry from Tyrtaean glory to soldiers’ suffering (Taylor), their bravery that left a civilian poet little to say by contrast (Shore, in a Spectator poem that first rhymed “thunder” and “wonder”), or soldiers’ suffering and bravery (Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade”). Civilian poets were inherently unable to accommodate roles of warrior-poets; hence, Tennyson subtly distanced his point of view from battle in “Charge” so that readers never see the soldiers, only their swords flashing in air (ll. 27–28), leaving civilians back home to “wonder.”

Thomas Campbell’s “The Soldier’s Dream” (1804) was an alternative influence on Victorian war poetry. In it a sleeping sentinel dreams of his family back home only to awaken to the wounded and another prospect of death for himself. Crimean armchair poets appropriated this use of dream visions, which contextualized Maud, part III when the lately mad speaker dreams not of a family back home but of Maud tricked out in the accoutrements of war, raising questions of the war’s efficacy. War poems by Gerald Massey, Tom Taylor (e.g., “Balaklava”), and the intriguing radical poet Robert Brough criticized government oversight of war or civilian “patriotism” that enabled complacency tantamount to complicity in government mismanagement. Their work, too, formed a backdrop for the doubtful aspects of war and suggested potential critique in the Tennysonian madman’s enthusiasm for war.

Sonnets on the War by Alexander Smith and Sydney Dobell (1855) contextualized Maud differently. Dobell’s “Home” presented the stark reality of death when a young woman thinking of her lover is roughly juxtaposed to his body now serving as “carrion” to ravens (l. 14); and in “Wounded” an army surgeon must pass over one man’s now-limbless trunk to try saving the life of a widow’s son. In “War,” Smith’s speaker bluntly addresses a wife back home, “The husband from whose arms you could not part / Sleeps among hundreds [End Page 408] in a bloody pit” (ll. 1-2). Such circulating imagery, combined with war journalism, Ho suggests, meant that the “dreadful hollow” of Maud would have resonated with the circulating lexicon of war references (l. 1). Thus...

• 丁尼生
• 琳达·K·休斯（简介）

2022 年期间没有出现关于阿尔弗雷德·丁尼生的长篇研究，但维多利亚诗歌中的克里米亚战争 作者：何大君 (Peter Lang) ，2021）提供了与丁尼生诗歌的持续接触。这项社会历史的互文文学研究考虑了非战斗诗人（或“纸上谈兵”诗人）在战地记者、电报和大众印刷时代所扮演的麻烦角色。一方面面对当前有关克里米亚问题的报道，维多利亚时代的诗人另一方面面对战争诗歌的遗产，包括歌颂战争和英雄主义的伊利亚特 。当远离家乡的英国士兵面临供应链不足、医疗服务不足和军官失误时，诗人在舒适地坐在家里时唤起荣耀或爱国主义可能会招致谴责。然而，对战争中士兵苦难的现实主义描述可能会令潜在读者感到排斥或困扰。何的成就建立在斯蒂芬妮·马尔科维茨和特鲁迪·泰特早期研究的基础上，将这些问题置于广泛的诗学和跨媒体背景中，阐明了战争诗歌不断发展的传统以及丁尼生自己的措辞和观点。何声称[End Page 407]在他所研究的大部分内容中都具有双诗的地位，因为维多利亚时代的战争诗歌呈现了“扶手椅诗人为表达难以形容的内容，描绘了报纸上报道的一场战争”，同时还融入了“一种社会政治批评，要求读者探索戏剧化的演讲者对冲突的参与，并将其作为分析对象”（第 45 页）。

Ho 通过考察提尔泰战争诗歌传统（以斯巴达武士诗人提尔泰乌斯命名）奠定了基础。托马斯·坎贝尔翻译的提尔泰乌斯的军事挽歌开篇写道：“手握利剑的勇士们多么光荣地倒下/在为祖国而战的前线！” （第 219 页）。何在丁尼生的独角剧第五章中指出，当演讲者描述莫德的军歌时，这些台词得到了呼应——丁尼生的读者很可能认识到了这一呼应。平民诗人汤姆·泰勒（Tom Taylor）、路易莎·肖尔（Louisa Shore）和丁尼生（Tennyson）的报纸诗歌将战争诗歌从提尔泰的荣耀转向了士兵的苦难（泰勒），相比之下，他们的勇敢让平民诗人无话可说（肖尔，在观众首首押韵“雷霆”和“奇迹”的诗），或士兵的苦难和勇敢（丁尼生的《轻旅的冲锋》）。平民诗人天生无法适应武士诗人的角色。因此，丁尼生在《冲锋》中巧妙地将自己的观点与战斗拉开距离，让读者看不到士兵，只看到他们的剑在空中闪烁（图27-28），让家乡的平民感到“惊叹”。

托马斯·坎贝尔的《士兵的梦想》（1804 年）对维多利亚时代的战争诗歌产生了另一种影响。故事中，一名沉睡的哨兵梦见自己的家人回到家中，结果醒来时发现自己受伤了，而自己也面临着死亡的危险。克里米亚扶手椅诗人挪用了这种梦境的使用，将莫德置于第三部分，当时最近疯狂的演讲者梦想的不是家乡的家人，而是莫德被欺骗了战争装备中出现了这种情况，引发了人们对战争有效性的质疑。杰拉尔德·梅西、汤姆·泰勒（例如《巴拉克拉瓦》）和有趣的激进诗人罗伯特·布劳的战争诗批评政府对战争或平民“爱国主义”的监督，这种监督使自满等于政府管理不善的同谋。他们的作品也为战争的可疑方面提供了背景，并对丁尼生狂人对战争的热情提出了潜在的批评。

亚历山大·史密斯 (Alexander Smith) 和西德尼·多贝尔 (Sydney Dobell) (1855 年) 创作的战争十四行诗以不同的方式对上下文进行了描述莫德。多贝尔的《家》呈现了死亡的严酷现实，一位年轻女子思念着她的爱人，粗略地与他的身体并置，现在他的身体就像乌鸦的“腐肉”（l.14）；在《受伤》中，一名军医必须越过一名男子现已失去四肢的躯干，试图挽救一名寡妇儿子的生命。在《战争》中，史密斯的演讲者直言不讳地对家乡的妻子说道：“你无法分开的丈夫/睡在数百人之中[End Page 408] 在一个血腥的坑里”（ll.1-2）。何表示，这种流传的图像与战争新闻相结合，意味着莫德的“可怕的空洞”会与流传的战争参考词汇产生共鸣（ l.1）。因此...