Tennyson

GodivaOr

Letting your hair down

Form

• Legend enclosed by a snatch of autobiography • Uses continuous blank verse, divided by

indentation into verse paragraphs• Blank verse - iambic pentameter, imitation of

speaking rhythms, etc.• Narrative perspective/multiple voices:

– first person/ self-dramatising – poet’s voice opens and closes poem, frames the whole narrative

– then moves into omniscience + reverential tone for the story of Godiva

– voices of Godiva and the grim earl are heard.

Structure:

• Framed narration:– Tennyson perhaps speaking as himself and his visit to

Coventry - detached authorial commentary at the beginning and end

– In a different time frame - middle section a linear chronology of Godiva’s confrontation with her husband and her triumph

– motif of journey• setting:

– Victorian England, industrial world, Coventry railway station,

– then Middle Ages/ medieval world, house with a great hall, street of Coventry, surrounded by countryside

Language

• formal elevated diction – deliberately slightly archaic• use of repetition/ anaphora• touches of humour ridicule earl, churl • patterns of figurative language

– esp. to describe Godiva as ‘light’ etc– esp. to personify buildings

• use of verbs - • punctuation to slow, accelerate pace

– esp. during ride• Sound –

– onomatopoeic language, esp. in final verse paragraph– assonance, for quietness

• use of dialogue

Contrasts

• What contrasts are there between Godiva and the Earl (Leofric)?– At first?– Later on?

• What contrasts are there between the domestic sphere and the external sphere?

• How does Tennyson show that Godiva’s action is intrinsically good?  – comparisons to light– retribution against the Peeping Tom.

Hair

• ‘But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her, for her hair is given her for acovering’ 1.Cor.11.15

• Private made public: hair normally worn up/in chignon, so long hair normally only seen in private, in boudoir, bedchamber

• Hence eroticised when depicted, long, in visual art.

• Thus supine knight in previous slide…

– ‘showered the rippled ringlets’– ‘unclad’, ‘half-dipt’