In Memoriam, Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Eugene R. August (essay date 1969)
Eugene R. August (essay date 1969)
SOURCE: August, Eugene R. “Tennyson and Teilhard: The Faith of In Memoriam.” PMLA 84, no. 2 (March 1969): 217-26.
[In the following essay, August discusses Tennyson's depiction of faith in terms of nineteenth-century scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's The Phenomenon of Man, concluding that while some critics condemn In Memoriam for failing to adequately portray faith, Tennyson is actually offering a radically modern depiction of it.]
“In Memoriam can, I think, justly be called a religious poem … because of the quality of its doubt. Its faith is a poor thing, but its doubt is a very intense experience.”1 Thus, in the early years of this century did T. S. Eliot state the case for reading In Memoriam as a poem of doubt veneered by an inadequate faith. By calling the poem's faith “a poor thing,” Eliot apparently meant two things. First, the...
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