“I Have Killed My Son”: Delving into Key- Utterances in Tennyson’s Dora (1842)

Abstract

Dora (Composed in 1835. Published in 1842) is one of Tennyson’s least anthologized poems, even though it incorporates a number of distinctive utterances scarcely found elsewhere in his oeuvre. Apart from the original collection of 1842, and the poet’s Complete Works, the poem is absent from the anthologies. This poem has received minimum attention from the critics. There are expressions in this dramatic poem unique to it only. It is intriguing that this work has attracted only a few passing remarks from the specialists, even though it was found good enough to put on the stage in the United States of America during the 1870s, according to Peter Hall’s Theatrical Anecdotes (P.32). It is different from the rest of the poet’s creative works because it is his only poem that treats filicide. The research questions focus on the following: Why did Tennyson write such a poem in the first place? Why did he borrow the plot from a prose narrative? What are the consequences of a Tennysonian character willing to venture outdoors? Are some of Tennyson’s characters in the poem simply corpses, like the walking dead in Gothic narratives? The utterances selected for the analysis are few and short but are key statements that highlight what Tennyson needed to articulate.