SOURCE: Markley, A. A. “The Foot Upon the Skull: In Memoriam and the Tradition of Roman Love Elegy.” Tennyson Research Bulletin 6, no. 2 (November 1993): 112-21.

In the following essay, Markley asserts that Tennyson's allusions to Roman love elegy are an attempt to heighten the expression of experience and emotion throughout In Memoriam.

Tennyson opens his prologue to In Memoriam with an invocation to the ‘Strong Son of God, immortal Love’. The Victorian reader would immediately recognize the identification of Christ here; moreover there is an echo of George Herbert's ‘Love’, which begins with the invocation ‘Immortal Love’ (Hill 1971, 119). Nevertheless, this address to a deified ‘Love’ sets up an immediate association with the genre of Latin love elegy popular in the late Roman Republic and the early Roman Empire. Tennyson's first line echoes not only Herbert, but also Propertius I.1, in which the narrator speaks of his first encounter with...