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'Intervital' Spaces: The Representation Of Liminal Epiphany In Tennyson's Death Poems (Alfred, Lord Tennyson), Somaya Sami Reda Saber Sabry

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The epiphanic moments in Tennyson’s symbolic poems about death can be understood as covert or dialogical explorations of a poetics of transition from pragmatic to imaginative experience. In this way Tennysonian representations of the death of culturally symbolic characters juxtapose the prevalent “Victorian” Utilitarian voice of authority and the now marginalized “Romantic” voice of creative vision.

Through the study of the epiphanic motif in Tennyson’s poems we discover an inherent death paradigm according to which Tennyson describes his characters’ journeys of death through three imaginative spaces: the centre, the liminal and the marginal. The liminal in this paradigm features the …