On Tennyson’s Necrophilia

Abstract

Death is the most outstanding motif in Alfred Tennyson’s poems. Tennyson was so obsessed with death that in his poems necrophilia becomes a phenomenon worthy of careful study. Tennyson’s necrophilia is shown or suggested in two aspects. On the one hand, carcasses, graves, charnels and ghosts are the most common factors Tennyson frequently resourced to in his poems; on the other hand, the fall of ancient civilizations and manslaughter are continually elaborated on in his poems. All these are employed to bring about terror and melancholy, which are expected to move the sensitive hearts of readers, to tears. In one word, necrophilia more or less equals Tennysonian poetics.