Mariana in the South explained

Mariana in the South
Author:	Alfred Tennyson
Genre:	Romanticism
Meter:	Iambic tetrameter
Rhyme:	ABABCDDCEFEF
Lines:	96
Wikisource:	Poems (Tennyson, 1843)/Volume 1/Mariana in the South

"Mariana in the South" is an early poem by Alfred Tennyson, first printed in 1833 and significantly revised in 1842.

Textual history

This poem had been written as early as 1831, and Hallam Tennyson tells us that it "came to my father as he was travelling between Narbonne and Perpignan".^[1] The characteristic features of Southern France are vividly depicted. The poem was very greatly altered when re-published in 1842, that text being practically the final one, there being no important variants afterwards.^[2]

In the edition of 1833 the poem opened with the following stanza, which was afterwards excised and the stanza of the present text substituted:

See also

• Mariana (poem)
• Measure for Measure

References

1. H. Tennyson 1897, p. 117.
2. Collins 1900, p. 50.

Bibliography

• Collins, John Churton, ed. (1900). The Early Poems of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. London: Methuen & Co. pp. 50–53.
• McLuhan, H. M., ed. "Mariana in the South". RPO: Representative Poetry Online. University of Toronto Libraries. Retrieved 12 May 2022.
• Tennyson, Hallam (1897). Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir by his Son. Vol. 1. London: Macmillan and Co., Limited. pp. 117, 500–504.