Softening the description

James R. Kincaid, Aerol Arnold Professor of English, University of Southern California

Note 10 to Chapter 2 of the author's Tennyson's Major Poems, which Yale University Press published in 1975. It has been included in the Victorian Web with the kind permission of the author, who of course retains copyright.

Tennyson later came to believe that this description was "too ghastly realistic" and softened it to "The bright death quivered at the victim's throat." See Ricks's note, p. 446.

Last modified: 28 March 2001