MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses” (1842), one of his most iconic and enduring, can be read against the politics of Empire that were so central to Victorian English society. As Rowlinson (1992) noted, for instance, the poem is particularly significant because of its enduring cultural resonance well beyond Victorian times and Tennyson’s death in 1892. Yet, there is one further way in which the poem’s implication with the conceptual politics of imperialism can be explored, namely by reading “Ulysses” in light of the complex politics of childhood also contained in the poem. Drawing on recent scholarship within the growing field of childhood studies, I therefore ask: How are the notions of childhood and Empire implicated into and shape each other in Tennyson’s “Ulysses”? And what can be learned about the conceptual politics of Empire—past and present—by applying a childhood studies perspective to the poem? I begin with a brief exploration biographical exploration of Tennyson’s own complex relationship with children and childhood. This sets the context for the second part which offers an explication of the poem from a childhood studies perspective. This focuses on the complex and multifaceted relationship of childhood and Empire. I then take advantage of the unique opportunity offered by “Ulysses” to move beyond Victorian times, and thereby build on Rowlinson effort and article mentioned above, by exploring the ways in which “Ulysses” has been used to teach British children about the Empire. In doing so, I draw on a recent example from the cultural Olympiad that took place as part of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games to shown the continued pedagogical significance of the poem today. This highlights the extent to which children and youth continue to be deeply implicated in the politics of what is now probably more adequately described as neo-imperialism.