News

Literary expert comments on anniversary of Tennyson's birth

(31 July 2009)

Prof Michael O'Neill

On the 200th anniversary of the birth of Alfred Tennyson, Durham University literary expert comments on the poet's remarkable achievements.

Professor Michael O’Neill, from Durham University’s English Department, said of Tennyson: “Tennyson was a great poet, a master of verbal music, able to write especially well about grief (In Memoriam), loss, and tragic love (Maud). He is a poet who occupies a crucial position between the Romantics and the Modernists, and therefore of particular interest to myself and colleagues at Durham studying 'Romantic Legacies'. “He is popular with students and people who love poetry. This is a major bicentenary, with conferences and a forthcoming OUP collection of essays, Tennyson among the poets.” Professor O’Neill, a poet himself, has written about Alfred Tennyson in his research. He has focused on questions of literary achievement, and his criticism is best known for its exploration of poetry as an art, albeit an art open to anxiety and self-questioning. His current research projects include working as a contributing editor on the multi-volume Johns Hopkins edition of Shelley's poetry, completing a volume on twentieth-century British and Irish Poetry for Blackwell's Guide to Criticism series, of which he is the general editor, and editing The Cambridge History of English Poetry. Prof O’Neill is a Founding Fellow of the English Association, and on the editorial boards of Romantic Circles, Romanticism on the Net, Romanticism, and The Wordsworth Circle.