Life Lived Quickly: Tennyson's Friend Arthur Hallam and His Legend

ISBN-13: 9781845194185 / Angielski / Twarda / 2010 / 323 str.

Blocksidge, Martin

Opis

Offering a more detailed and objective portrait of Arthur Hallam, this biography presents Arthur Hallam as a complex and interesting character in his own right, supplementing and challenging his representation in Tennyson s celebrated poem In Memoriam. Hallam s early death was the subject of the poem, portraying him as almost divinely gifted and of immense promise, and after its publication he became a legendary figure. That Hallam has a difficult relationship with his father (himself a famous literary figure), suffered a mental breakdown during his first year at Cambridge, and pursued an extremely fraught love affair with Tennyson s sister in the face of opposition from both families, are important but largely unknown aspects of his life. The author also repudiates the often-made suggestion that Hallam and Tennyson may have had a homosexual relationship. As well as examining Hallam s published writings, the book makes liberal use of his letters, and includes treatments of never-before-published poems and more recently discovered letters, making this a thorough biography of an English poet made famous by a poem that was not his own."