Albright contends that Tennyson's "aesthetic goals were... in conflict" and that his poetry attempts to "unite two incompatible poetics, '' one governed by a heavenly muse, the other by an earthly muse suspicious of the idealizations and abstractions held dear by the first. The result is a poetry of "myopia and astigmatism." With its neatly pursued argument and jargon-free text, this study offers many insights, though a readership fluently conversant...