Tennyson's Geology

Tennyson’s In Memoriam was written in a time of disruption for not only the poet but for the intelligentsia of the Victorian era. The mid 19^th century was a time of rapid scientific development and even though In Memoriam would predate Darwin’s Origin of Species, the scientific discourse of the day was already challenging the notion of a world existing solely for the dominion of man. As mentioned in the introduction to this text, Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology had a tremendous impact on Tennyson. Lyell brought the idea of geological evolution to the forefront of popular science and forced many Victorians to reevaluate their conceptions of an Earth created by divine providence in contrast to a planet ruled by chaotic upheavals in the natural world.

It is between these two competing ideas of how Nature operates that Tennyson creates a space for human habitation and evolutionary advancement. With images of divinity focused on the sky and images of death focused beneath the surfaces of the planet, the geologically minded poet creates a middle ground between the two opposing ideologies for the “little lives of men” (section II, line 8) to run their course. In the Prologue, Tennyson invokes the son of God as represented by the sun and the moon and trusts that our dead will not be left to lay beneath the dust forever. In the second section, a tree runs its roots into the ground to nurture itself on the remains of those interred in the church graveyard. In the first, he mentions dancing with death in order to “beat the ground” (12). The idea that Tennyson believes that contemporary man has evolved from the ashes of those before him is given a physical manifestation. As we bury our dead into the ever-changing geological landscape, we bring ourselves closer to a higher form of being and closer to God.