3. Maud Herself

About this Lecture

Lecture

In this module, we turn to the presentation of Maud herself in the poem, almost all of which is through the eyes of the (apparently deranged) speaker of the poem. But do we ever catch a glimpse of the ‘real’ Maud? To what extent are the romantic feelings expressed in the poem mutual?

Course

In this course, Professor Seamus Perry (University of Oxford) explores Tennyson’s ‘Maud’ (1855), a narrative poem about man’s relationship with a sixteen-year old girl called Maud. As we move through the course, we think about the concepts of ‘monodrama’ and ‘speculation’ in the poem, the characterisation of Maud herself, the use of repetition in the poem, the ending of the poem, and the poems that were published alongside ‘Maud’ in the original 1855 collection, ‘Maud and Other Poems’.

Lecturer

Seamus' interests are principally in the field of English Romantic poetry and thought, especially Coleridge and Wordsworth, and in post-Romantic English poetry, especially Tennyson, Eliot, Auden, Larkin, and their circles. He also has an interest in the modern history of criticism, reflected in articles on A.C. Bradley, William Empson, F.W. Bateson, and M.H. Abrams. He is co-editor, with Christopher Ricks, of the journal Essays in Criticism: A Quarterly Journal of Literary Criticism (OUP), and the general editor of the new series, 21st-Century Oxford Authors (OUP). He often reviews for the Times Literary Supplement, the London Review of Books, and the Literary Review. He is also Fellow Librarian of Balliol.