A Blessing and a Curse: The Poetics of Privacy in Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott"

The Lady in "The Lady of Shalott" emblematizes two ideals implicit in both Hallam's notion of the poetry of sensation and in Romantic poetics in general: the autonomy and the femininity of the artwork. These ideals stem from a social world radically split into private and public domai...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Victorian poetry 1986-04, Vol.24 (1), p.13-30
Main Author: Chadwick, Joseph
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
19th century
Aesthetics
Anonymous writers. Authors
Blessings
English speaking literatures
Femininity
French speaking and English speaking literatures
Great Britain. Ireland
History and sciences of litterature
History of literature
Literary criticism
Lyric poetry
Narrative poetry
Poetry
Romantic poetry
Victorians
Visual perception
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:The Lady in "The Lady of Shalott" emblematizes two ideals implicit in both Hallam's notion of the poetry of sensation and in Romantic poetics in general: the autonomy and the femininity of the artwork. These ideals stem from a social world radically split into private and public domains-the social world of nineteenth-century England. By focusing on a woman who is an artist and who becomes an artwork, the poem defines the similar problems of isolation and objectification which that split creates for women, artists, and artworks. It deeply questions the very ideals its protagonist embodies.
ISSN:0042-5206
1530-7190