SOURCE: Friedman, Norman. “Hallam on Tennyson: An Early Aesthetic Doctrine and Modernism.” Studies in the Literary Imagination 8, no. 2 (fall 1975): 37-62.

In the following essay, Friedman examines “On Some of the Characteristics of Modern Poetry, and on the Lyrical Poems of Alfred Tennyson.” He claims the essay demonstrates Hallam as an original and almost prescient critic, noting connections between Hallam's essay and modernism.

Tennyson praised Hallam, whose death set In Memoriam in motion, as a man of unusual intellectual promise cut off in his prime. If Hallam's essay, “On Some of the Characteristics of Modern Poetry” (1831),¹ published two years before his untimely death, is any indication, then Tennyson was right, for it seems to me a brilliant piece of work. Following Newman's “Poetry with Reference to Aristotle's Poetics” (1829) by two years, and preceding Mill's “Thoughts on Poetry and its Varieties” (1833, rev. 1859) by the same number of years, Hallam's essay...