LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Ulysses: World
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Tennyson' angled sight of Ulysses marks a shift back to knowledge gained through worldly experience. In Tennyson's "Ulysses," Odysseus is a figure mainly heroic in his ability to continue in the pursuit of knowledge regardless of the misfortunes that are bestowed upon him. This theme, in fact, closes the poem:
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Whereas Virgil addresses the Greek hero Ulysses in Inferno 26, Dante himself inquires of Guido da Montefeltro--a figure from Dante's medieval Italian world--in Inferno 27. Guido (c. 1220-98), a fraudulent character who may himself be a victim of fraud, immediately reveals the limits of his scheming mind when he expresses a willingness to identify himself only because he believes (or claims to believe) that no one ever returns from hell alive (Inf. 27.61-6). T. S. Eliot uses these lines in the Italian original as the epigraph to his famous poem about a modern-day Guido, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock":
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Tennyson curiously fails to mention Ulysses' questionable characteristics. In using Ulysses as narrator, Tennyson attitude toward him is slightly unclear. With the exception of endurance, the attributes -- tact, guile, craftiness, perseverance -- that make Odysseus a hero of the ancient world are mainly absent from "Ulysses." Ulysses is clearly a positive figure for Tennyson. His virtue is measured, then, by his persistence in exploring the world, while the world remains unknown.
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That Virgil is the one to address Ulysses--the "greater horn" of the forked flame (85)--is itself noteworthy. On the one hand, this may simply reflect a cultural affinity between Virgil and Ulysses, two men from--in Dante's view--the ancient world. On the other hand, Virgil's appeal to Ulysses based on whether he was "deserving" of Ulysses in his "noble lines" rings false (Virgil in fact has nothing good to say about the Greek hero in the Aeneid)--so false that some think Virgil may be trying to trick Ulysses by impersonating Homer!
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