Monodrama

Tennyson: Maud

In this course, Professor Seamus Perry (University of Oxford) explores Tennyson’s ‘Maud’ (1855), a narrative poem about man’s relationship with a sixteen-year old girl called Maud. As we move through the course, we think about the concepts of ‘monodrama’ and ‘speculation’ in the poem, the characterisation of Maud herself, the use of repetition in the poem, the ending of the poem, and the poems that were published alongside ‘Maud’ in the original 1855 collection, ‘Maud and Other Poems’.

Monodrama

When Maud was first published, its full title was ‘Maud; A Monodrama’. In this module, we consider the concept of ‘monodrama’ —what does this term mean, and does it affect the way we read the poem?