i have to evaluate the way monsters are presented in this poem discussing how attitudes and values are conveyed how the genre and context shape meaning and the writers/speakers choice of form and style. any help will be well appreciated thx :)

There is some info. here:

[www.cs.rice.edu]

The Kraken
Alfred Lord Tennyson

Below the thunders of the upper deep,
Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant fins the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battering upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by men and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

Les

What tedious, desiccated, not to say dumb questions these educators ask!

Do they know what they mean when they refer to 'genre' and 'context' for a poem like this? Is there a recognized genre of poems about monsters? I doubt it. However a few such poems (findable on the Internet) come to mind, which you might compare, mainly for their utter dissimilarities:

'The Second Coming' by W.E.Yeats
'Jabberwocky' and 'The Hunting of the Snark' by Lewis Carroll

and I'd love to post the light hearted 'The Bunyip and the Whistling Kettle' by John Manifold, but it's still copyright to the University of Queensland. It's in 'The Penguin Book of Australian Satirical Verse' (1986), edited by Philip Neilsen.

As for 'context' I have no idea what's meant. The context of Tennyson's other poems? He was only 21 when he wrote this. It was one of his earliest. The historical context? It was written in 1830. You could comment that it is a 'romantic' poem, in the sense that it focuses on imagined images, not on reality.

As for 'attitudes' and 'values', what can be discovered in such a short poem? Is the kraken feared? Not clear. Perhaps there's a certain tension between - on the one hand - pagan superstition, exemplified by belief in lurking monsters, which Tennyson assumes his readership will be willing to entertain, and - on the other - faith that humanity will be immune from any manifestation of them. The hidden depths of the sea are treated as vast, wondrous and mysterious, but are assumed to be within the compass of human description, and thus implicitly human knowledge (ultimately). It was an age of optimism and discovery and belief in scientific and social progress. It seems taken for granted that humankind rules the world and will prevail 'for ages', and that 'men and angels' are on the same side, and that any threat posed by the kraken will 'die' when it surfaces.

The choice of form seems of little relevance. There are 15 lines, one more than in a sonnet; and there's a rhyme scheme; but so what? It's probably one of those young man poems that wrote itself. In other words the form probably just happened rather than was chosen.

The style (ornate vocabulary in 5-beat lines) fits well the feelings of mystery, seriousness and awe that the poet evidently wants to convey about the kraken. Even the name 'kraken' used in the title, taken from the Norwegian word for a sea-monster, conveys a sense of mystery and strangeness. Again I wonder whether any of this was deliberate choice, or just something that came instinctively and naturally to a poet as talented and word-skilled as Tennyson.

Is 'Battering' correct, or should it be 'Battening'?

Ian



Post Edited (11-15-04 06:39)

>Is 'Battering' correct, or should it be 'Battening'?

From the usage and context, I would think it SHOULD be "battening". But I've seen it both ways here on the web.

Les

>I'd love to post the light hearted 'The Bunyip and the Whistling Kettle' ...

[fay.iniminimo.com]

Mebbe it's a 'monster' of a sonnet, having 15 lines, that is. Could be a volta on line 11 (instead of line 9), and the rhyme scheme is abab cddc efea afe (instead of, say, abba cddc efe fef), another 'monstrous' construction.

Yeah, it is a strangely worded assignment. Ian covers the ground well, but I might add a note about the abundance of 's' sounds - hissing?