Abstract

This study offers a view of In Memoriam in relation to nineteenth-century Idealist thought as it informed the Zeitgeist of Tennyson's time. It begins by reviewing the central philosophical positions of the indigenous Empiricist-Utilitarian tradition and some objections voiced against them in the popular press during the late 1820s. Then Chapter III reviews ideas that the English routed out of the works of the German Idealists, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, and adopted or adapted to their needs. Chapter IV first indicates how Tennyson may have come into contact with Idealist ideas and habits of style that were "in the air" and available in the popular press and the works of Coleridge and Carlyle; then it focuses upon those in Tennyson's immediate milieu who were familiar with Idealism, expressed Idealist views, and reflected its style and language in their published writings and private letters. ;Chapters V through VII are close comparative readings of In Memoriam and early English translations of Fichte's popular works, The Vocation of Man and The Way Towards the Blessed Life, seminal texts and models of nineteenth-century Idealist thought and uses of language. Chapter V explores analogous ideas and stylistic devices in In Memoriam and The Vocation of Man as it focuses upon three important concepts: the monism of all reality; the significance of boundaries; and the movement and progress within the ultimate unity of all experience. Chapter VI is a comparative study of the form, design, and development of these two works. Finally, Chapter VII explores the Christian elements in Tennyson's poem and Fichte's The Way Towards the Blessed Life. Schlegel had called the Fichtean philosophy a "sign of the times"; and these close comparative readings demonstrate the extensive reflection of Idealist thought in Tennyson's major poem and its position as a representative text of the Zeitgeist of its era