The Lady of shalott :
About the author:
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson FRS (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign and remains one of the most popular British poets.[citation needed] In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his first pieces, "Timbuktu". He published his first solo collection of poems, Poems Chiefly Lyrical in 1830. "Claribel" and "Mariana", which remain some of Tennyson's most celebrated poems, were included in this volume. Although described by some critics as overly sentimental, his verse soon proved popular and brought Tennyson to the attention of well-known writers of the day, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Tennyson's early poetry, with its medievalism and powerful visual imagery, was a major influence on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
About poem:
"The Lady of Shalott" is a lyrical ballad by the English poet Alfred Tennyson. Inspired by the 13th-century short prose text Donna di Scalotta, it tells the tragic story of Elaine of Astolat, a young noblewoman stranded in a tower up the river from Camelot. This poem was published in 1833.
Analysis of The Lady of shalott
The Lady of Shalott’, on one level, is about growing up and exchanging the world of illusion for the (potentially damaging) world of reality – at least, in one interpretation. The Victorian critic R. H. Hutton (1826-97) argued that the poem’s meaning (if it can be said to have a ‘meaning’ in the straightforward sense) is that we must turn away from the world of illusion, however comforting that world may be, in favour of the real world – even if it ends up destroying you. As Hutton wrote, the poem ‘has for its subject the emptiness of the life of fancy, however rich and brilliant’.
But such an analysis, of course, could easily sit alongside another interpretation of the poem, namely one which sees ‘The Lady of Shalott’ as essentially being about love. Love may be dangerous and may destroy us, but it’s better to take that risk than to pine away, hiding yourself from the world. Or, as Tennyson put it more famously in his long poem In Memoriam in 1850, ‘’It is better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all.’
After all, it is Lancelot, that dashing knight and adulterer, the queen’s paramour in Arthurian legend, who inspires the Lady of Shalott to leave the safety of her tower and descend into the ‘real’ world. Love is about taking risks: we are not fully alive without it, but we know that it has the power to destroy us, too.
Such an interpretation, in turn, folds into another analysis of the poem, which focuses on the fact that the Lady of Shalott is just that, a lady. Another Victorian critic, R. W. Croker, saw the whole poem as constituting an extended pun on the word ‘spinster’: the Lady of Shalott weaves or spins all day, because she is unmarried and locked away from the rest of the world, including the world of love embodied by Camelot and Lancelot. It’s a nice idea, but even if we acknowledge that the word spinster is an undercurrent to the poem, is that really all it is about?
Tennyson’s poem inspired several paintings, and a number of artists who formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood later in the 1840s would go on to paint scenes from ‘The Lady of Shalott’. The most famous of these is by John William Waterhouse, and depicts the scene near the end of the poem where the Lady of Shalott, in her boat, is floating along the river towards Camelot. However, William Holman Hunt also painted a scene from the poem – namely the crucial moment when the Lady of Shalott turns away from her mirror and looks out of her window down at Lancelot.
The Lady of Shallot is not an allegory though as in Marina the images sometimes have the power of symbols, says Steane . The mirror, for instance, suggests much beyond its role as an item in a fairy story. For as the Lady weaves the mirror's magic sights in her tapestry she is herself partly taking the role of the artist , and her existence in the island castle has something in common with the artist's apartness . Moreover, as she sees reality only through her mirror the artist may tend to vicariously draw his knowledge not from direct contact but from other words of art. He has his own special nature, like the lady; partly an affection to him this sense of difference, partly a blessing and possibly the very condition of his being an artist at all .For life in the ordinary day to day life he may be all unfit, as was the Lady, and, for him as for her, only disaster may follow the attempt to break the bounds. This is not ' the message ' of The Lady of Shalott but it is , definitely , a part of the ground out of which the poem grew .
Symbolism in the poem:
The Lady, in her tower on Shalott, is surrounded by lilies, a frequent symbol of chastity and purity. Incidentally, lilies are white, a colour traditionally associated with purity.
Central theme of the poem:
Major Themes in “The Lady of Shalott”: Isolation, detachment, and the supernatural elements are the major themes of this poem. The text revolves around the mystery of the Lady of Shalott, who is trapped. She accepts it as her fate and is emotionally and physically detached from the real world
Conclusion :
This poem was a notable poem of the Victorian age. By this poem readers get an idea of imagination, imagery of Tennyson. To conclude this poem the readers can consider that Tennyson was very much influenced by the romantic Poets.
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