An Essay on Ulysses by Tennyson: A Post-colonial Reading. DOC

Title	An Essay on Ulysses by Tennyson: A Post-colonial Reading.
Author	A V Koshy
Pages	3
File Size	39.5 KB
File Type	DOC
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Summary

A Political Re-reading of the Poem “Ulysses” by Lord Alfred Tennyson Dr A.V. Koshy While teaching the poem both my colleague Dr M F Raiyah – an Egyptian scholar - and I agreed that the poem was a justification of colonialism. Tennyson was Poet Laureate of England and Ireland at the time of writing t...

Description

A Political Re-reading of the Poem "Ulysses" by Lord Alfred Tennyson Dr A.V. Koshy While teaching the poem both my colleague Dr M F Raiyah – an Egyptian scholar - and I agreed that the poem was a justification of colonialism. Tennyson was Poet Laureate of England and Ireland at the time of writing this poem and had, as part of his responsibilities, naturally, to glorify Queen Victoria's expansionist policies and the Empire, the Commonwealth. He was not, we were definite, averse to the task. This far we both agreed. But his reading, especially of the first part of the poem varied from mine. Another difference was that I came from India which was the 'jewel in the crown.' A third one was I wanted to look at C.P.Cavafy's idea of Ithaka too. Cavafy being Greek glorified the ideal Ithaka as the place to go to, and ended up praising the Odyssey or journey more than the destination. He also spoke of a journey like Whitman's passage to "more than India", one to more than Ithaka. But Tennyson opens in a suggestively different way; his Ulysses is tired and bored of /with Ithaca and wants to go back to his wars, and wanderings and adventures. The first line reminds us of King David whom Ulysses seems not to be like, he wants to go for war at the right time and not be entrapped by idleness. But the first disquieting strand in Tennyson's lines comes suddenly with his diction in "mete and dole/ unequal laws to a savage race/that hoard and sleep, and feed and know not me." Dr Raiyah and I discussed this, and he spoke of the savage race being the colonized peoples who do not know the Queen, a race made up of the "much have I seen and known, cities of men/ And manners, climates, councils, governments." While I do not disagree with him, I felt this was a leap in interpretation and told him I wanted to play it safer and felt that the savage race spoken of was the new urban working class/labourer class in Victorian England. Thus his reading is post colonial and mine Marxist in the beginning, though mine is also post-colonial because the word hoard is suggestive as is 'mete and dole' for me. The problem here is deconstruction. The text begins to seemingly dissolve if I handle it too much as one to be read using close reading techniques. Is Tennyson suggesting that Ulysses/ Queen Victoria is dissatisfied that he/she only seems to be giving out laws in return for nothing from a race that only "hoards" and does not do 1...