The Charge of the Light Brigade Analysis

Welcome to the land of symbols, imagery, and wordplay. Before you travel any further, please know that there may be some thorny academic terminology ahead. Never fear, Shmoop is here. Check out our...

Irregular Rhyme, Dactylic DimeterRhymeLet's tackle the way this poem rhymes first, because it's kind of interesting and unusual. Some poems have very regular rhyme patterns, with the same sounds r...

Have you ever seen a big-budget Hollywood movie about World War II? There's always a lot of fighting and action, and then, sometimes, at the end, it cuts to an old veteran remembering the war and...

The poem is based on an actual historical event: the Charge of the Light Brigade during the Battle of Balaclava (which happened during the Crimean War). This went down in Crimea in 1854. Here's th...

We think "The Charge of the Light Brigade" is a textbook example of a poem that uses its language to recreate the sounds it's describing. In this case, that sound would be the noises of battle. Th...

This title, "The Charge of the Light Brigade," is pretty darn descriptive, and not much of a riddle. It tells us who the main characters are (the Light Brigade) and what they did (charge!). We im...

Traditional, Patriotic, Steady PoetryTennyson had a super-long career and wrote a ton of poems, so we're not going to try to fit them all under one big umbrella. Let's just deal with the second ha...

(3) Base Camp It takes a moment to figure out where we are when this poem starts, and what's going on. Once you've done that, though, the language is pretty clear and straightforward. Should make...

Tennyson had a personal relationship with Queen Victoria and her husband – a pretty big deal for an Englishman in the 19th century (source).Tennyson waited fourteen years (!) to marry his wife, E...

GPlenty of violence, not a hint of sex. Sorry, folks.

Historical ReferencesThe Battle of Balaclava