"The Ionian father of the rest" — a note to Tennyson's "The Palace of Art"
George P. Landow, Professor of English and the History of Art, Brown University
"The Ionian father of the rest" is Homer. Tennyson several times revised this presentation of his pantheon and markedly improved his mention of Homer, albeit at the cost of simplicity. Ricks points out (409n) that the 1842 edition of "The Palace of Art" had instead "The bald blind Homer smiled."
[Back to the passage in "The Palace of Art"]
References
Tennyson, Alfred. The Poems. Ed. Christopher Ricks. (Longmans Annotated Poets Series) London: Longmans, 1969.
Last modified 11 October 2005