The Lotos-Eaters

"The Lotos-Eaters" is a poem by Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, published in Tennyson's 1832 poetry collection. It was inspired by his trip to Spain with his close friend Arthur Hallam, where they visited the Pyrenees mountains. The poem describes a group of mariners who, upon eating the lotos, are put into an altered state and isolated from the outside world.

In the summer of 1829, Tennyson and Arthur Hallam made a trek into conflict-torn northern Spain. The scenery and experience influenced a few of his poems, including Oenone, The Lotus-Eaters and "".

These three poems, and some others, were later revised for Tennyson's 1842 collection. In this revision Tennyson takes the opportunity to rewrite a section of The Lotus Eaters by inserting a new stanza before the final stanza. The new stanza describes how someone may have the feelings of wholeness even when there is great loss. It is alleged by some that the stanza refers to the sense of loss felt by Tennyson upon the death of Hallam in 1833.

The mariners are put into an altered state when they eat the lotos. During this time, they are isolated from the world:

The mariners explain that they want to leave reality and their worldly cares:

The mariners demonstrate that they realise what actions they are committing and the potential results that will follow, but they believe that their destruction will bring about peace:

Although the mariners are isolated from the world, they are connected in that they act in unison. This relationship continues until the very end when the narrator describes their brotherhood as they abandon the world:

The form of the poem contains a dramatic monologue, which connects it to "Ulysses", St. Simeon Stylites, and Rizpah. However, Tennyson changes the monologue format to allow for ironies to be revealed. The story of The Lotos-Eaters comes from Homer's The Odyssey. However, the story of the mariners in Homer's work has a different effect from Tennyson's since the latter's mariners are able to recognize morality. Their arguments are also connected to the words spoken by Despair in Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book One. With the connection to Spenser, Tennyson's story depicts the mariners as going against Christianity. However, the reader is the one who is in the true dilemma, as literary critic James R. Kincaid argues, "The final irony is that both the courageous Ulysses and the mariners who eat the lotos have an easier time of it than the reader; they, at least, can make choices and dissolve the tension."

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