"Alfred Tennyson: The Critical Legacy explores the critics' reaction to the work of the nineteenth-century English poet most closely associated with the Victorian era. Perhaps more than any other Victorian poet, Tennyson's reputation has waxed and waned in the century since his death. He has been alternatively sanctified and vilified for his choice of subject matter, social outlook, morality, and techniques of versification. Individual poems have been at times celebrated as the greatest examples of their genre or condemned as contrived tours de force that warrant little critical attention. The poet's reputation has weathered even the most vitriolic attempts to discredit both the man and his writings; and as criticism of the late twentieth century demonstrates, Tennyson's claim to pre-eminence among the Victorians is now unchallenged." "In this narrative analysis of the critical tradition, Laurence Mazzeno begins with an examination of ways Tennyson was regarded by his contemporaries, before launching a detailed examination of twentieth-century criticism. A chapter is devoted to the period immediately following Tennyson's death, when a generation of post-Victorians reacted violently against what they considered his sappy sentimentalism, cloying moralism, and insensitive jingoism. Subsequent chapters describe ways critics resurrected Tennyson from the reactionaries, highlighting both his technical mastery and his ability to critique the society that had embraced him so dearly."--BOOK JACKET.