What aspects of his subjects lives does Tennyson often explore?

An appreciation of Tennyson's achievement as an artist requires that one understand his idea of the role of the poet. For centuries, the Aritotelian idea of the poet as maker and upholder of society's best values had dominated Western thinking: but in the half century before Tennyson began writing, the notions of Romanticism, which celebrated art as self-expression & venerated the poet as rebel and social critic, had taken hold. Throughout his life, Tennyson was forced to choose between being the public artist, bent on confirming that which was best in his society, and the private mystic, attempting to explore the psychological dimensions of the human character as he experienced the vicissitudes of his own storm-tossed life.