Making Meaning of the Anthropocene: An Ecocritical Analysis of Tennyson’s Existential Crisis in “In Memoriam”

Abstract

Jesse Oak Taylor describes Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “In Memoriam” as “the poem of the Anthropocene” (230). Taylor suggests that this is in part due to the subject matter of the poem, which grapples with concepts of faith, afterlife, evolution, extinction, geologic time, and advancing technologies. The knowledge that ensued from the early Anthropocene complicates Tennyson’s understanding of death and the afterlife. Tennyson writes at a moment when the Anthropocene had only just begun. Therefore he writes about a condition in which he is fully immersed. But, as Taylor suggests, Tennyson must address the Anthropocene prospectively because the concept had yet to fully emerge. In this paper, I argue that it is necessary for Tennyson to discuss death through the effects of the Anthropocene because the knowledge arising from this new geologic age changed his understanding forever, and ultimately confused his faith in the afterlife. His deep concern for Hallam’s soul makes establishing a more concrete sense of the afterlife essential to the grieving process.