THE METAPHYSICS OF THE FORM BEAUTY AND REALITY IN THE ART OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON

Year 2021, , 110 - 124, 31.01.2021

Anna Asıatıdou

https://doi.org/10.21547/jss.773969

Abstract

THE METAPHYSICS OF THE FORM: AESTHETIC REALITY AND SPECULATIVE REALISM IN THE ART OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON

Abstract

In the Victorian poetry of A. L. Tennyson, formal artistry acts as the starting point of questioning fixed ideas and creating new perceptions of what is beautiful, pure, and real. Tennyson’s works are symbiotic not only with its contemporary movement of Aestheticism but also with posterior movements focusing on the relation between Form, Object, and Reality. His poetry, although it belongs to a specific period, acts in an axis of formal significance and Speculative Realism. Much of Tennyson’s poetry focuses on the beauty of form and the form as subject matter. Despite Tennyson’s dual oriented poetic interest on form as beauty and subject matter, his artworks act as an unlimited field of multiple changes, relations, and creations that open the discussion about a metaphysics of the form. Tennyson uses the form as resistance towards a limited context and, overall, artistically inspires new perceptive realities or innovative organic schemata towards an alternative understanding of what reality is.

Keywords

Form, Aesthetic, Realism, Tennyson

References

• Abrams, M.H.(Ed.) (2000). The Norton Anthology of English Literature (7th ed.) 2, Norton & Company.
• Asiatidou, A. (2020). The Role of Art towards an Understanding of Reality: The Aesthetic on the Defence of Consciousness. English Studies in the 21st Century, .228-243. UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
• Asmis, E. (1986). Psychagogia in Plato’s Phaedrus. Illinois Classical Studies, XI, University of Chicago, 153-172.
• Dowling, C. (2013). Aesthetic Formalism. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Open University UK,http://www.iep.utm.edu/aes-form/.
• Fenner, D. (2010). Why has Aesthetic Formalism Fallen on Hard Times? Philosophy Faculty Publications.2. http://digitalcommons.unf.edu/aphi_facpub/2,
• Harman, G.(2018). Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory Of Everything. UK: Pelican Books.
• Kant, I. (2001). Basic Writings of Kant. A. W. Wood (Ed). Modern Library.
• Leighton, Α.(2007). On Form: Poetry, Aestheticism, and the Legacy of a Word. Oxford University Press.
• McDonald, P.(2004).Beside Him. Poetry Review, no.93, 62-70.
• Moore, C. (2012). Socrates Psychagogos (Birds 1555, Phaedrus 261a7). Socratica III, St. F. Rossetti (Ed), 1-19.
• Plato (2008). Phaedrus, www. Gutenberg.org/1/6/3/1636/.
• ---. (2008). Republic, B. Jowett (Trans.),Project Gutenberg, www.Gutenberg.org/1/4/9/1497/.
• Ricks, C. (2007). Introduction. Alfred Lord Tennyson: Selected Poems, Penguin Classics, xv-xxxiv.
• Robson, C. & Christ, C. (2012).The Victorian Age 1830-1901: Alfred, Lord Tennyson 1809-1892. The Norton Anthology English Literature, vol.2, 9th ed, edited by Stephen Greenblatt, Norton & Company, 1156-1259.
• Schiller, F. (1967).On the Aesthetic Education of Man: In a Series of Letters, E. M. Wilkinson. L. A. Willoughby (Ed.) & (Trans). , Clarenton Press.
• Tennyson, L. A. (2007). Alfred Lord Tennyson: Selected Poems, C.Ricks (Ed.), Penguin Classics.
• ---. (2007).The Lady of Shalott. Alfred Lord Tennyson: Selected Poems, C. Ricks (Ed.), Penguin Classics, 8-13.
• ---.(2007).The Lotos-Eaters. Alfred Lord Tennyson: Selected Poems, C. Ricks (Ed.), Penguin Classics,24-29.
• ---. (2007).Ulysses. Alfred Lord Tennyson: Selected Poems, C. Ricks (Ed.), Penguin Classics, 49-50.
• ---. (2007).Break break break. Alfred Lord Tennyson: Selected Poems, C. Ricks (Ed.), Penguin Classics, 89.
• ---. (2007).The Splendour Falls on Castle Walls. Alfred Lord Tennyson: Selected Poems, C. Ricks (Ed.), Penguin Classics, 94.
• ---. (2007).In Memoriam A.H.H. Alfred Lord Tennyson: Selected Poems, C. Ricks (Ed.), Penguin Classics, 96-199.
• ---. (2016). The Lover’s Tale: by Alfred Lord Tennyson, Forgotten Books.
• ---. The Palace of Art. The Victorian Web, www.victorianweb.org. http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/tennyson/palacetxt.html