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GCSE English Literature · key term
An officially appointed national poet whose role includes writing poetry connected with public occasions.
Used by AQA and Edexcel
Paper 2
Revise: The Charge of the Light BrigadeTennyson was Poet Laureate. His public role helps explain the poem’s commemorative purpose and its vocabulary of honour, duty and national remembrance. However, praising the soldiers does not require him to defend the order.
Paper 2
A poet appointed by the monarch to a national public role, often associated with poems marking significant occasions.
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Tennyson (1809–1892) had been Poet Laureate since 1850. He wrote the poem after reading reports in The Times, and it was first published on 9 December 1854, only weeks after the charge. This helps explain its public, commemorative voice: the narrator is not an individual soldier remembering his own experience, but a voice shaping how the nation should remember the men.
