Page "Ulysses (poem)" Paragraph 50

Critic E. J. Chiasson argued in 1954 that Ulysses is without faith in an afterlife, and that Tennyson uses a " method of indirection " to affirm the need for religious faith by showing how Ulysses ' lack of faith leads to his neglect of kingdom and family.

Chiasson regards the poem as " intractable " in Tennyson's canon, but finds that the poem's meaning resolves itself when this indirection is understood: it illustrates Tennyson's conviction that " disregarding religious sanctions and ' submitting all things to desire ' leads to either a sybaritic or a brutal repudiation of responsibility and ' life '.