English Poetry - Kraken by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Alfred, Lord Tennyson was a poet during the time of Queen Victoria. (1800's)

He was born was born in England and was one of 12 children.

He and his siblings were said to be home-schooled by his father, who was a country clergyman (rector).

This home-schooling is mentioned in several different websites although I personally noticed that Alfred did in fact attend school at various ages. He was born in 1809 and it is mentioned that he attended a school from 1816 for 4 years. This alone covers his life from approx. 7 - 11 years old in a school ?  He then attended other schools as well after this. This need clarification.

He began to write poetry at an early age in the style of Lord Byron.

He became a popular poet of the English language. Much of his poetry was based on mythology.

Some of his phrases have become very well known and are often repeated.

The poem in my English Poetry textbook is:

THE KRAKEN

Below the thunders of the upper deep,
Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant fins the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battering upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by men and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.



Here is a link to some opinions of his poem: The Kraken:

http://www.eliteskills.com/analysis_poetry/The_Kraken_by_Alfred_Lord_Tennyson_analysis.php

Basically what they are saying is that there are various interpretations of his poem and different students back up their interpretations with various valid points.

Some people feel that the poem is just about a sea monster who will awaken at the end of the world as predicated in the Bible Revelations).

Other students feel that he is writing about his fear of mental illness, which runs in his family and how he hides it but it may explode and rise to the surface.

There are even others who believe that he was writing about the industrial revolution and how the lowest class of people were hidden deep inside workhouses and not seen and they grew restless and rose to the surface and protested etc.

I personally, don't see any evidence that he wrote about anything other than the Kraken. He makes no personal references to himself, any mental illness nor does he mention or even hint at anything to do with industrialisation or protests etc. There are times when a poet merely writes on a topic of his choice and there are no hidden meanings.

In the case of this poem the old language emphasises the ancient nature of the Kraken - unknown creature of the deep.

Students also discuss the fact that he wrote the poem as a broken sonnet. A sonnet is a poem of 14 lines that follows a strict rhyme scheme and specific structure. Basically every second line rhymes and then the last 2 lines rhyme.

Tennyson's poem is 15 lines long, not 14.

Line 1-4 - every second line rhymes.  deep/sleep, sea/flee
Line 5-8 - Line 5 and line 8 rhyme, Line 6 and 7 rhyme. swell/cell, height/light
Line 9 - does rhymes not rhyme with any other line polypi 
(Where he breaks the pattern).
Line 10 rhymes with Line 14   green/seen
Line 11 rhymes with Line 15   lie/die
Line 12 rhymes with Line 13   sleep/deep

Perhaps the reason why it is important to note the broken sonnet, is because it shows that he did not feel bound by the accepted rules of poetry for that day.  He seems to have had his own ideas and felt confident enough to break with the accepted norm.  He did though, adhere to a system of rhyming but not a strict and consistent system, as was used by Shakespeare. The irregular rhythm may emphasise the confusion and chaos of the hidden/unknown world of The Kraken. The 15th line possibly indicates that there is more to the poem than meets the eye as it is an additional line to the accepted 14 lines of a sonnet.  It may also be added as line 9 has no rhyming couplet and so perhaps he added the additional line to compensate for this.

If one looks a the 10 syllable rule of "iambic pentameter", as far as I can see,  he generally uses 10 syllables per line (There seem to be a couple of exceptions where he used 9 or 11 syllables but I may be wrong about that ?)

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For more detail on poem structure - See my later post on Sonnets*

The other thing that is looked at in studying this poem, is the effect of the old english language words.  Even though his words were usual for the time he wrote it in, language has changed a lot and these words are no longer used or understood by students today.  The use of these olden day words, however does add the effect to the poem of the Kraken being lost in time, historically.  It makes you really feel for the time that has passed and how it belongs to a different era.  Once you know what the words mean...

Eg:  Grot - cave,  winnow - stir (Wake up), sleepeth - hibernate/sleep.