The Anglo-Arabic Poetics of “Locksley Hall”: Importation, Oscillation, and Disorientation

  Considerable scholarly attention has been given to Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem, "Locksley Hall," in relation to one of its main sources, the "Mu'allaqa" of Imru' al-Qais, but scarcely any has been paid to the comparative aspects of the two poems. This essay engages Tennyson 's debt to the "Mu 'allaqa"—its meter, imagery, and themes— in writing "Locksley Hall, " and traces the modifications of al-Qais's poetics as they travel from one culture to another. The essay argues that Tennyson's borrowing—importing—of the "Mu'allaqa's" more salient poetics reveals much about "Locksley Hall's " speaker and his representations of his cousin Amy. Ironically, these representations include the orientalization, exoticization, and commodification of Amy in order to render her inferior to the speaker even while the poem relies on the pre-lslamic poetics of the "Mu 'allaqa. "