The Classical Monologues

Even as a child, Tennyson loved the Classical world of ancient Greece and Rome. When he grew up, he often wrote about that world. In Demeter and Persephone, Tiresias, The Hesperides, Tithonus, Oenone, Ulysses, St. Simeon Stylites, and St. Agnes’ Eve, he allowed characters from the ancient world to utter their thoughts directly in dramatic monologues. Such monologues are most often associated with Robert Browning, but in these poems, Tennyson shows that he himself could write with a Browningesque ear for the varied quirks and oddities, superstitions and hypocrisies, hopes and possible triumphs of human beings.