This book takes on a seemingly hopless project: Rowlinson uses deconstructionist methods to show how Tennyson's poetry was influenced by psychoanalytic theory. The biggest problem with this work is that Tennyson predated Freud by 75 years or so, and Freud predated deconstructionism by 30 years or so, and deconstruction also predated Rowlinson himself by 25 years or so. Also, Tennyson is (on the surface at least) perhaps the least psychologically introspective poet since Homer. Rowlinson's work seems doomed from the start--- but it works, thanks to the author's fierce sense of humor and relentless intellect.