Introduction:
The Lady of Shalott
by
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
1809-1892
Source
Database: EXPLORING
Poetry
Table of Contents
SOURCE CITATION
"The Lady of Shalott" tells the story of a woman who
lives in a tower in Shalott, which is an island on a river that
runs, along with the road beside it, to Camelot, the setting
of the legends about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round
Table. Every day, the woman weaves a tapestry picture of the
landscape that is visible from her window, including Camelot.
There is, however, a curse on her; the woman does not know the
cause of the curse, but she knows that she cannot look directly
out of the window, so she views the subjects of her artwork through
a mirror that is beside her. The woman is happy to weave, but
is tired of looking at life only as a reflection. One day, Sir
Lancelot rides by, looking bold and handsome in his shining armor,
and singing. The woman goes to the window to look directly out
of it, and the moment she does, she knows that the curse is upon
her. So she leaves the tower, finds a boat at the side of the
river, writes "The Lady of Shalott" on the side of
the boat, and floats off down the river toward Camelot. As she
drifts along, singing and observing all of the sights that were
forbidden to her before, she dies. The boat floats past Camelot,
and all of the knights make the sign of the cross upon seeing
a corpse go by, but Lancelot, seeing her for the first time,
notes, "She has a lovely face."
This poem was first published in 1832, when Tennyson was 23
years old, in a volume called Poems . Up to that point,
Tennyson had received great critical acclaim, and had won national
awards, but the critics savagely attacked the 1832 book, mostly
because of poems such as "The Lady of Shalott" that
dealt with fantasy situations instead of realistic ones. The
next year, 1833, Tennyson's best friend died, which affected
the poet as greatly as would anything in his life. For a long
time, during a period that later came to be known as "the
ten years' silence," nothing of Tennyson's was published.
In 1842, a new volume, also called Poems , was published,
to great critical acclaim. The new book had a slightly revised
version of "The Lady of Shalott," and this version
is the one that is studied today.
Source Citation: "Introduction:
'The Lady of Shalott' by Alfred, Lord Tennyson." EXPLORING
Poetry. Gale Research, 1998. Reproduced in Student Resource
Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale Group. December, 2000.
http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/SRC/
Document Number: CD2114621803
Copyright © 2002 by Gale
Group . All rights reserved.
Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company.
|