SOURCE: August, Eugene R. “Tennyson and Teilhard: The Faith of In Memoriam.” PMLA 84, no. 2 (March 1969): 217-26.

In the following essay, August discusses Tennyson's depiction of faith in terms of nineteenth-century scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's The Phenomenon of Man, concluding that while some critics condemn In Memoriam for failing to adequately portray faith, Tennyson is actually offering a radically modern depiction of it.

“In Memoriam can, I think, justly be called a religious poem … because of the quality of its doubt. Its faith is a poor thing, but its doubt is a very intense experience.”¹ Thus, in the early years of this century did T. S. Eliot state the case for reading In Memoriam as a poem of doubt veneered by an inadequate faith. By calling the poem's faith “a poor thing,” Eliot apparently meant two things. First, the faith was not deeply professed by Tennyson himself: “Tennyson's...