Lady of Shalott, The~ by Alfred Lord Tennyson~ February 9-28

[ginny]

The Book Club Online is  the oldest  book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone.  We offer cordial discussions of one book a month,  24/7 and  enjoy the company of readers from all over the world.  Everyone is welcome.

February  Book Club Online:

The Lady of Shalott
by Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892 )

The Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse, “I am half-sick of shadows” (1916)

Our Readers  Respond to the Question, What's This Poem About in One Word:
   


---shattering of self-delusions and its possible consequences (Frybabe)

--- disenchantment (Halcyon)

---romantic (nlhome)

---reflection/  reflective: Andrea (ALF)

---fear (ginny)

---change (Barb)

---whodunit? (Jonathan)

---isolation (Pat H.)



DISCUSSION SCHEDULE:


February 9-28

Interesting Links: :

~ Enjoy this haunting rendition of the poem in  ballad form  by Loreen McKenna with many beautiful illustrations

~A comparison of editions:  1833 and 1842 by The Camelot Project at the University of Rochester

~ Elaine of Astolat links

Elaine of Astolat is the maiden who dies of unrequited love for Lancelot and floats in a barge to Camelot with a letter for Lancelot clutched in her lifeless hand. She appears in Malory and in Tennyson's idyll of "Lancelot and Elaine." The figure of Elaine in the barge became one of the most popular Victorian images.

~ SC Edu Library Online Text

~ A wonderful page on the Lady by a pathologist with a very clever way of comparing the editions.

~The Winged Horse: Tennyson, submitted by Jonathan and Frybabe.

~Schmoop: A discussion of the rhyme scheme and meter of the Lady

Discussion Leader: ginny

And there are knights in shining armor, too!! How up ARE you on your knights and armor? Take This delightful quiz from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and enjoy finding out!

[ginny]

Shriek!!! hahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa OH man, I thought Ulysses  WAS the King. I thought the thing was in parts and Ulysses was one part! Obviously have never understood that. So the  Idylls are about Arthur apparently. hahahaaa  I love it.

Am I or am I not out of my field? hahahaa  Man oh man, well one can't say one is not learning things in here. Fabulous. Thank you for that. I really should have looked it up.

Jonathan, can we read Ulysses then? I do  know something of Odysseus hahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Well I agree we're having fun, anyway, or I am. Totally unabashed and actually more determined than ever to make my theory fit. Because it really makes sense.

Andrea, I love what you said and you're right.

Barbara, love the colors, I actually love the way the thing is introduced, the stanzas, and who they relate to, but this that Halcyon has put in here is shocking.

 Does it mean anything to anybody else?

I had NOT noticed the change in the pronoun and now copying from Halcyon rather than trusting to memory hahahaa

1832
And down the river's dim expanse
With a steady, stony glance
Beholding all her own mischance
Mute, with a glassy countenance
    She looked down to Camelot


1842

And down the river's dim expanse
Like some bold seer in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance --
With a glassy countenance
    Did she look to Camelot.

Oh wow, look at that, I had not noticed  that change. So originally it IS her own mischance.. and originally she had a stony glance, but in the second one we've got a simile: like a seer in a trance and it's his own mischance... Can that be a reference to Tennyson himself?

Whoever it IS, it's not the Lady's mischance in the final version. She's not seeing her own mischance.

What does  "mischance" mean in this context?


I'm glad I looked back in here tonight. I needed that laugh.   Just love it.     hahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

[BarbStAubrey]

Ginny what do you think, I am re-reading and re-reading - oh dear it can take the magic away but still, onward, I am getting from this second version of 1842, the word 'Like' suggesting to me the picture of a bold seer in a trance seeing his mischance is describing the river that has a glassy countenance - and since we call rivers 'she' I am thinking this whole bit is telling us the river is similar to - maybe the mirror?? do you think?? Unless we see this stanza as a continuation of the preceding that talked about the boat and the boat is the she but then, a stanza is usually a new thought. hmm - see what y'all think.

And down the river's dim expanse
Like some bold seer in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance --
With a glassy countenance
    Did she look to Camelot.

Again, we can each have an association that would give us a personal impact from this poem - for this exploration of the poem, if the river is similar to the mirror with its glassy countenance - a river flowing while having a glassy countenance suggests a still barely moving river - not too far from you neck of the woods Ginny, I spent time the holiday visit walking with my grands along the Green River and where the rapids flow a powerful push of water, the water meets a stillness in the river that appears glassy before the surface shows a small amount of movement, slowly moving reflecting sky and shoreline. On the Green the next set of rapids breaks that stillness where as the river in our poem does not speak of rapids, only the glassy countenance.

Ok the River of Paradise flows from four directions, the source is usually a spring or in some cultures from the Tree of Life - we also have the River of Life and Death which is a river flowing upstream to its pristine source - while the mirror is called the "Mirror of the Universe" which is the reflection of the supernatural and divine intelligence in addition to, the reflection of the temporal world and man's knowledge of himself and, if a mirror is spotless it is called the "Mirror of Justice."

Hmm we do have a 'mirror clear' - but OK the glassy river and clear mirror are not twins of the same thought are they - the river seems to have an even more spiritual philosophy when depicted in art where as, the mirror is just what it is, a reflection of man.

Is she taking a spiritual journey do you think??!!?? - Leaving her cocoon where she weaves the web that is the story of man and takes to the river at night - hmm the Dark Night of the Soul - the more you read it sounds like she died of exposure - hypothermia

"In the stormy east-wind straining," - the Bible suggests "An east wind will come, The wind of the LORD coming up from the wilderness; And his fountain will become dry And his spring will be dried up; It will plunder his treasury of every precious article."

Wow the way Lancelot is depicted he sure is a shiny, glittery and bejeweled spectacle.  Is the ending where he says 'she has a lovely face and God give her grace' plundering from him a concern for another rather than he continuing being the razzle dazzle c'est moi?

On to her hypothermia...

"The broad stream in his banks complaining,
Heavily the low sky raining"

So she takes off on a rainy night with the wind blowing,
"robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right"

Does not sound like warm clothing to me if it can fly in the east wind and there is no talk of this boat having any shelter - she sings carols as the boat slowly floats down to Camelot - "Till her blood was frozen slowly," - OK those witnessing her arrival in death have no idea how she died only that there is this strange women, not dressed for a rainy windy night, in a shallow boat, dead upon arrival.

[Jonathan]

Lately I find myself thinking I should get a little poetry into my life. And I think The Lady will do it. As well as the wonderful company I find myself in with all of you.

It seems passing strange, too, that I came into posession of Tennyson's Idylls of the King just a few weeks ago. I found it among my brother's things after he passed away, at ninety, a few days before Christmas. It has 1922 on the title page and his signature is in the handwriting of a teenager. His funeral we celebrated on Christmas Eve and he was laid to rest with several carols, just as he would have wanted. Death came as a friend.

Along with the Idylls, among his things was another delightful book published in 1927, The Winged Horse: The Story of the Poets and Their Poetry. I can't resist quoting from the chapter on Tennyson, something which, I think, adds strength to the serious argument Ginny makes in her post.

'(Tennyson)...had a natural shrinking away from the real world toward his dream world. He was doubtful of life. He was afraid that love might sink into passion, adventure turn into folly, liberty become license. So, like his Lady of Shallot, he watched the reflection of a life he did not share or in many ways even watch attentively, and he wrote of the things that did not disturb him - the pure Sir Galahad, the pale, rapt St. Agnes, the miller's daughter, the May Queen. He wrote also of patriotism, and...England...listened to this  music of quiet country life, of dewy trees and gentle sadness anf faithful love, and was charmed by it. This sad sweet poetry, as well as the stirring Ulysses and the splendid Morte Arthur, was responsible for a growing popularity that now came to Tennyson'

But a mid-life crisis also came into his life. What else could have him exclaiming, after marrying Emily Sellwood in 1850, at the age of 41: 'The peace of God entered my soul, when I wedded her at the altar.' (The Winged Horse, page 312)

[Jonathan]

And then the lighthearted Lancelot, singing 'tirra lirra' as he 'flashed into the crystal mirror.' Did he see all the white lilies set off by all the grey walls and wonder about them? Did they have meaning for him?

[Frybabe]

PatH, the passage you quoted from Ulysses is begging to be printed out beneath a picture of the cosmos. It reaches far beyond the earth in its scope.

Jonathan, et.al., I found The Winged Horse: The Story of the Poets and Their Poetry on archive.org. https://archive.org/details/wingedhorsestory00jose Unfortunately, it gave me an error message when I tried to download it for my Kindle, but I did bookmark it. My favorite site, Project Gutenberg, does not seem to have it. I, too, have been paying a little more attention to poetry lately.

[ginny]

Oh Jonathan, what a treasure of a book. And my sympathy to you in the death of your brother, you are a long lived family. And I have to say that you are one of the most literate families I have ever encountered. Every time we have a book discussion, here you are saying I found on my shelves XXX and it's some seminal, very old book right to the point.

And what a treasure this one is!! Thank you for that link Frybabe, it opens nicely online and one can turn the pages as if it were a book, here's the link to page 303 the Tennyson chapter and you'll all notice the illustration has a boat (note the glassy water) in the background: you just click the right side of the screen and the page turns. A wonderful afternoon of reading awaits.

https://archive.org/stream/wingedhorsestory00jose#page/302/mode/2up/search/303

Of course we must do the Idlylls now, but Ulysses is also so short perhaps we could throw it in, too? Sort of a Tennyson discussion? I really love the idea. I'm up for July if anyone else is?

Anybody who knows me knows that I favor long illustrative art filled headings. A long time ago when we were starting out I remember arguing for them and one of our group saying let's let our words be the illustration and in THIS discussion they are. The words are so rich, they are better almost. One can see the illustrations in the lovely links Bluebird has posted and in the song in the heading, she's got almost every illustration known to man except possibly the Howard Pyle which I'm about to bring here.

Frybabe, you are amazing finding all these things, can you find "The Life of the Life," which the pathguy says Tennyson wrote and it's a companion to the poem?

Like Pat I am trying not to read the Path guy with whom I sort of disagree on some things, (apparently a lot of things), but I need some of his info, too, so am reading him with half an eye.

That quote is right on it, Jonathan! Thank you.  I keep thinking of Stephen King. He says he writes to exorcise his own demons. He says it is better than paying a psychiatrist. I think a lot of poets did that, and I think you can see the man in this one.

Barbara! I think you've got it!! Well done, I never considered that, at all: Is she taking a spiritual journey do you think??!!?? - Leaving her cocoon where she weaves the web that is the story of man and takes to the river at night - hmm the Dark Night of the Soul - the more you read it sounds like she died of exposure - hypothermia! and again we'll have to research but frozen!!

She died of hypothermia!! - "Till her blood was frozen slowly," They are reaping, so it has to be toward the fall. I bet if some of  us were gardeners, we could identify the time of year by the very flowers you talked about.

I do know that Julius Caesar was anxious to return to the Continent and he was around London and St. Albans at the time, because of the weather in Britain and it was late in the fall. We've got some Latin students in the UK, I think I will inquire of them what temps there might be in Tintagel in the fall? Why not?


I've been to Tintagel, it's wild and cold even in the summer, what must it be in the late fall? But the question is, despite this: "Till her blood was frozen slowly," -

There it is. IS that only a poetic explanation or is that exactly what happened?

When I read "countenance," I thought it was her face. I thought she (Tennyson) was in one of his trances again....but it COULD be the water, that peculiar still water they have in the UK,  and then  there's the seer. Oh I had not thought of the glassy countenance as the river NOR as the mirror, wow. That is going to take some time to take in.... Did she exchange one mirror for another?

Lot of reflective images here. This thing is a lot more deep than I thought.

And down the river's dim expanse
Like some bold seer in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance --
With a glassy countenance
    Did she look to Camelot.

The river is like a seer in a trance seeing all his own mischance. The pathguy defines mischance as "Mischance: Bad luck (i.e., Tennyson's psychic foresees his own disaster)"

What does he mean there?  What's the message here?  HIS own disaster, but we're not talking about the "seer in his trance," who has also got to be Tennyson,  we're talking about her? HE is the one who espouses (because Tennyson's own son said so) the Lady is the Artist and the weaving is the artist's (Tennyson's) work and it's about dedicating yourself to your art, that struggle between the creative and the real world...

But I think it's about something else. I do agree the Lady is Tennyson. I don't think his work is what he's worrying over.

I need to work on what Halcyon said here:   Ginny  Perhaps if you revise your theory a bit, Tennyson, like the Ojibwa wolves, has come to see his internal battle and he is both the Lady and Lancelot.  Then the date of the doc's diagnosis wouldn't matter


 He's got to be "the seer" too, don't you think? He's the entire poem, the two halves of the Ojibwa wolves? (Why are you reading about the Ojibwa?)


I never have seen Lancelot as any part of this, what do you all think about Lancelot now? Do you still blame him? I fail to see, I really do, how this can be a poem about Unrequited Love, unless the love is one of life. I don't see how Lancelot can be held for blame here, do you?

(I'm changing my one word to "Fear.") Anybody else want to change their word? UP they go today in the heading.

[Frybabe]

Well, Ginny, you really gave me a research task. I cannot locate any poem by Tennyson by the title "Life of the Life". I did find this on Google

https://books.google.com/books?id=IpBRAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA74&lpg=PA74&dq=Tennyson+%22Life+of+the+Life%22&source=bl&ots=LFopeISMCV&sig=HUilFtpgGzOKz6wIo-LZ0xQwgUw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=IJHfVJ3vOoqyggSp4IOoBg&ved=0CDIQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=Tennyson%20%22Life%20of%20the%20Life%22&f=false

[Frybabe]

Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere

a fragment

First published in 1842. Not altered since 1853.

See for what may have given the hint for this fragment Morte D'Arthur, bk. xix., ch. i., and bk. xx., ch. i., and cf. Coming of Arthur: ­

    And Launcelot pass'd away among the flowers,
    For then was latter April, and return'd
    Among the flowers in May with Guinevere.


    Like souls that balance joy and pain,
    With tears and smiles from heaven again
    The maiden Spring upon the plain
    Came in a sun-lit fall of rain.
    In crystal vapour everywhere
    Blue isles of heaven laugh'd between,
    And, far in forest-deeps unseen,
    The topmost elm-tree  1  gather'd green
    From draughts of balmy air.

    Sometimes the linnet piped his song:
    Sometimes the throstle whistled strong:
    Sometimes the sparhawk, wheel'd along,
    Hush'd all the groves from fear of wrong:
    By grassy capes with fuller sound
    In curves the yellowing river ran,
    And drooping chestnut-buds began
    To spread into the perfect fan,
    Above the teeming ground.

    Then, in the boyhood of the year,
    Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere
    Rode thro' the coverts of the deer,
    With blissful treble ringing clear.
    She seem'd a part of joyous Spring:
    A gown of grass-green silk she wore,
    Buckled with golden clasps before;
    A light-green tuft of plumes she bore
    Closed in a golden ring.

    Now on some twisted ivy-net,
    Now by some tinkling rivulet,
    In mosses mixt  2  with violet
    Her cream-white mule his pastern set:
    And fleeter now  3  she skimm'd the plains
    Than she whose elfin prancer springs
    By night to eery warblings,
    When all the glimmering moorland rings
    With jingling bridle-reins.

    As she fled fast thro' sun and shade,
    The happy winds upon her play'd,
    Blowing the ringlet from the braid:
    She look'd so lovely, as she sway'd
    The rein with dainty finger-tips,
    A man had given all other bliss,
    And all his worldly worth for this,
    To waste his whole heart in one kiss
    Upon her perfect lips.


I fail to see how the unpublished fragment (previous post) would have fit in this poem. It is in first person voice, while this poem is not. Maybe he changed the voice so in so doing dropped it. Speculation!

[Jonathan]

You are amazing, Frybabe, finding a link to The Winged Horse so quickly. It's the best quick tour of the world of poetry that I have ever seen.

But I'm in a hurry. I just want to thank Halcyon for the 'partyfoundation' link. At the very bottom, in the reading list, I found the Tennyson biography by John Batchelor, To Strive, To Seek, To Find. My library branch just called to say it's waiting for me.

[BarbStAubrey]

He did include the words from his great sage poetic giant Shakespeare in this poem

   

When daffodils begin to peer,
With heigh! the doxy over the dale,
Why, then comes in the sweet o' the year,
For the red blood reigns in the winter's pale.
The white sheet bleaching on the hedge,
With heigh! the sweet birds, O, how they sing!
Doth set my pugging tooth on edge,
For a quart of ale is a dish for a king.
The lark, that tirra-lirra chants,
With heigh! with heigh! the thrush and the jay,
Are summer songs for me and my aunts,
While we lie tumbling in the hay.

[ginny]

I apologize in advance for these long posts. I know sometimes people break their own long posts  down into one or two sentences and then post 10 of them but I have to give you the benefit of the doubt, if you have the attention span to read something and comment on it, I have to assume you have the attention span to read one of my long posts. Besides, I'm lazy . hahahaa

I agree with ALF (Andrea) it's such a pleasure to come in here and read and reread your thoughts. Always something new and bright and jingling just like Lancelot. Something about those bells on the bridle really gets to me, what a romantic romantic image. What could be more romantic than a horse drawn sleigh in the snow with the bells, unless it's a knight in shining armor singing. That tirrra lirra, Barbara noticed, does it have some meaning I don't know of? I mean I have never heard anybody sing tirra lirra, although wasn't there an Irish song of our youth similar to it, an Irish Lullaby?

What a revelation Jonathan's brother's Winged Horse: The Story of the Poets and Their Poetry has been. Note however what is left out? Nothing on the trances or gout. Nothing on the alcoholism the Spark Notes cites (see below).

I am extremely interested to hear what Jonathan finds in his new find, Tennyson biography by John Batchelor, To Strive, To Seek, To Find.

In the Winged Horse, however is another telling paragraph I've put here:



It appears from this fragment that it was Tennyson himself who was responsible for the Victorian's obsession with Arthur, is that the way you read this? HE was the one who took it on and made it the staple of Victorian interest.

I wonder why? What was it about the Victorians which made them long for the stories of Camelot? Was it like our Downton Abbey? I don't know much about the Victorians, but I am learning from your posts.

Our Man in Britain has come through with a site for weather in the UK showing Tintagel, which he says is "a very rugged place at the best of times." It is showing for today lows in the 30's. But I cannot make any of the weather sites show it for September (I figure if they are reaping barley or rye it has to be September or October, but...wait.... rye is a winter crop, it could be spring? That's when it turns gold here. When does this poem take place? One can't look up the monthly weather till one figures out what month or season it takes place iN?  Lillies in bloom? Easter? Spring?

But I did find this from WEbMD:

 What can cause hypothermia?

Hypothermia can occur when you are exposed to cold air, water, wind, or rain.

Your body temperature can drop to a low level at temperatures of 50 °F (10 °C) or higher in wet and windy weather, or if you are in 60 °F (16 °C) to 70 °F (21 °C) water. If you have mild hypothermia, home treatment may be enough to bring your body temperature back up to normal.

Anybody who has been to Tintagel knows the winds, it's on the coast and the winds roar and you are cold all the time. If it's early  Spring (lilies?) then it's in the 30's and raining most of the time in the evenings. It looks to me like Barb's theory of hypothermia is right on.

Now here are our "one words" so far, have I left anybody out?

---shattering of self-delusions and it's possible consequences (Frybabe)

--- disenchantment (Halcyon)

---romantic (nlhome)

--- Reflection/  Reflective: Andrea (ALF)

---Fear (ginny)


But Tennyson went on. Once he married, according to the Winged book, all sorts of honors and joy came his way, he was literally drowning in  joy.  What a lovely ending for him. But when he wrote this, a completely different fate seemed to await him, or so he appears to have thought. I like the date now of his doctor's diagnosis, 1848 and his subsequent marriage in  1849 because this poem is sort of a desperate sad thing, to me, a person (Lady, Tennyson, anybody) shut off from the brightness (metal glinting, bells jingling, and singing on top of it) world of perfection out there which could be his if only he dared try.

You can see what he thought trying would get him.

Frybabe, the Life of the Life I thought was a biography of Tennyson, but I can't find it either. Thank you for that exhaustive research, I agree that doesn't quite fit,  but it's interesting, anyway. It may be, like other British books, in a different title here.

And in back reading I found Halcyon saying this: Don't we all weave the web of our own reality every day?


And there it is again. We actually do, don't we? And especially on the internet, where some people actually create a fictional person...just because they can. Or they are not happy with themselves. Just weave a new person, who will know?

Now those of you who don't see Tennyson as the Lady, what do you see? A fairy tale where the Lady inexplicably dies? What do you see? You are as entitled as anybody else to your opinion.

I want to look now at the way the  poem is written. What  rhymes and what doesn't and the Pathguy has given me an idea about who those stanzas reference, did you notice that?

But he's not said what it means. I'd like to look at that.

The Lady of Shalott is called a "ballad." What IS a ballad? What's the pattern or rhyme scheme of it? IS this one?   As we've started in on this we may as well do it well. What's the difference in a ballad and a "lay?" (No off color remarks, please!) hahahaa

I'm actually thinking the rhyme scheme here may be important. I could be dead wrong but  we won't know unless we look at it, right?



What time of year is it?

And just to confuse things further, Spark Notes (http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/tennyson/section2.rhtml)

says the following:[/color]

The Virtues of Perseverance and Optimism

After the death of his friend Arthur Hallam, Tennyson struggled through a period of deep despair, which he eventually overcame to begin writing again. During his time of mourning, Tennyson rarely wrote and, for many years, battled alcoholism. Many of his poems are about the temptation to give up and fall prey to pessimism, but they also extol the virtues of optimism and discuss the importance of struggling on with life. The need to persevere and continue is the central theme of In Memoriam and “Ulysses” (1833), both written after Hallam’s death. Perhaps because of Tennyson’s gloomy and tragic childhood, perseverance and optimism also appear in poetry written before Hallam’s death, such as “The Lotos-Eaters” (1832, 1842). Poems such as “The Lady of Shalott” (1832, 1842) and “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (1854) also vary this theme: both poems glorify characters who embrace their destinies in life, even though those destinies end in tragic death. The Lady of Shalott leaves her seclusion to meet the outer world, determined to seek the love that is missing in her life. The cavalrymen in “The Charge of the Light Brigade” keep charging through the valley toward the Russian cannons; they persevere even as they realize that they will likely die.

I didn't know Tennyson was alcoholic? Did you see the Lady "glorified?" by her embracing her destiny in life?

She failed, right? OR?  I'm not seeing her glorified.

[Halcyon]

I discovered something when trying to compare the poem line by line.  Only in the path guy's version does the line "Beholding all her own mischance" change to "his mischance" in the later version.  Reading the poem as written on The Poetry Foundation's site and the Camelot Project at the University of Rochester the line originally says "his" and does not change.

The stanza below was in the 1832 version in Part 1.  Who does the bold section refer to  The Lady or someone in the shallop?

The little isle is all inrail'd
With a rose-fence, and overtrail'd
With roses: by the marge unhail'd
The shallop flitteth silken sail'd,
       Skimming down to Camelot.
A pearl garland winds her head:
She leaneth on a velvet bed,
Full royally apparelled,
       The Lady of Shalott.[/color]

Ginny, I'm wondering if this takes place over more than one season?
 
Also, what, if anything, does Tennyson's religious beliefs have to do with the ending change?  Was Tennyson mocking Lancelot, God or religion?
 

Who is this? and what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they cross'd themselves for fear,
       All the knights at Camelot:
But Lancelot mused a little space;
He said, "She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
       The Lady of Shalott."[/color]

[BarbStAubrey]

A pearl garland winds her head: what a lovely line to bring to our attention Halcyon and so apropos - I do not know if it is still the fashion but when I was a babe, as my mother before me and when my daughter was a babe we still carried the tradition of giving as a Baptism gift to the new Baby girl a pearl and for families with greater means there was more than one pearl or for some little girls a pearl was added to a gold chain every year and for sure we received a string of pearls for our sixteenth birthday.

Not only did the pearl stand for the purity and innocence of a girl child but it was part of the Baptism tradition, the 'pearl of great price' that was supporting the baby girl with the courage to know she would encounter dangers and now she had Christ the Savior at her side throughout her life.

I cannot believe that tradition came out of the blue and so I can see that as being understood when readers read Tennyson's poem that the Lady of Shalott was wearing the sign of courage and that Christ was with her on her journey down river.  

[BarbStAubrey]

aha   Ginny my one word was - Change

I am not good at it and it takes posting for me to see how difficult it is to write ironic comedy but my post about Tirra-Lirra was an ironic piece of fun - here we read how Tennyson so revered Shakespeare as the Great Sage and so...his memorial to this great admired man in this poem is the inane singing jingle Tirra-Lirra - don't you think it is funny and so ironic it makes me laugh with the joy of it...

[Frybabe]

What a lovely tradition Barb.

[Halcyon]

Barb. Do you still have your pearls?  What a nice way to celebrate your baptism. Did the boys get something special?  I love these stories about family traditions.

[BarbStAubrey]

Yep - hoping for a granddaughter - my daughter has hers - this was the way for nearly all the schoolmates I had growing up -

[Jonathan]

'No off color remarks, please.' Certainly, Ginny, but I could not finish your wonderful post with a straight face.

How wonderfully ironic. In the end Camelot and its king were the escape Tennyson needed. Real life had been too painful for him. I visited Tintagel many years ago. Certainly a magical, awesome place. Tennyson visited the area and felt himself close to God.

After a lot of thought and searching for one word for this poem, I decided that 'whodunit' would serve best to catch its spirit. What a mystery. What a death that made the knights cross themselves with fear. That's so unknightly. Clues? The Lady was at her window, only 'a bow shot' away. Bow shots are death dealing. Lancelot is caught at the scene. A shallop was seen leaving the scene at great speed,  leaving a little boat behind. Why would a living Lady need to identify herself with a banner on the boat? And many more questions come to mind. Come to think of it, poetry must have served the Victorians as science fiction and mystery. And Tennyson was happy to fill the need. The knights were sent a message.

Here's something curious from my volume of Tennyson's poetry. As we know, The Lady of Shalott was written in his early twentys. Before that, according to the table of contents of my collection of T's poetry , he had written poems to or about: 'Claribel', 'Lillian', 'Isabel', 'Mariana', 'Madeline', 'Oriana', 'Adeline', 'Margaret', 'Rosalind', 'Eleanore, and 'Kate'.

Kate: 'I know her by her angry air, Her bright black eyes, her bright black hair, Her rapid laughters wild and shrill, As laughters of the woodpecker From the bosom of a hill. 'Tis Kate - she sayeth  what she will: For Kate hath an unbridled  tongue, Clear as the twanging of a harp. Her heart is like a throbbing star....Oh! Kate loves well the bold and fierce; But none are bold enough for Kate She cannot  find a fitting mate.'

And then The Lady of Shalott.

[ginny]

Look at that rhythm in Jonathan's poem!

Da DA da DA da DA da DA

This work me up at 2 am. I kept thinking what if...what IF we had a "Tennyson  Day" in here and everybody wrote their thoughts in this rhythm?

Are you game? hhahaa  And then I thought, wait? What IS the rhyme scheme and the meter, what?

OH it's a lot more complicated than I thought.

A LOT.

I found Schmoop: http://www.shmoop.com/lady-of-shalott/rhyme-form-meter.html


And here is what they say, I'll just quote it in quotation marks and not in the dark matter:


"Analysis: Form and Meter



Rhyming Lines in Iambic and Trochaic Tetrameter

Let's start with the way Tennyson breaks up the lines in this poem. The most basic division in the poem is the four big chunks (Parts 1-4). It might help to think of these like acts in a play – they each focus on a different part of the plot. Part 1 describes the landscape around Shalott. Part 2 describes the Lady and the things she sees in her mirror. Part 3 deals with the appearance of Lancelot and how cool he is. Part 4 covers the Lady's boat ride and her death. When you move to a new part, it's a signal that the poem's plot is shifting gears.

The next important things to notice are the stanzas, the smaller groups of lines, which are like the paragraphs of a poem. In this particular poem, Tennyson makes it easy on us, because the stanzas are always nine lines long. There are a total of nineteen stanzas in the whole poem. If we count up the stanzas, we can see that the Parts of the poem get longer as we go along. The first two parts have four stanzas each, Part 3 has five stanzas, and Part 4 (the longest) has six stanzas. You definitely don't have to memorize these details, but it's good to keep an eye out for them. Great poems are always carefully put together.

Now let's check out the way this poem rhymes. Tennyson made a big deal out of the rhyming lines in this poem, which are super-noticeable once you start to focus on them. Each stanza in this poem rhymes in exactly the same way, so once we show you how one of them works, you'll know everything there is to know. We'll demonstrate with the first stanza. To make it clearer, we'll put rhyming sounds in bold, and give each different sound a letter:

On either side the river lie A
Long fields of barley and of rye, A
That clothe the wold and meet the sky; A
And through the field the road runs by A
To many-towered Camelot; B
And up and down the people go, C
Gazing where the lilies blow C
Round an island there below, C
The island of Shalott. B

See how that works? We start out with four rhyming lines in a row (in this case: lie, rye, sky, by). Then in line 5 we get the word "Camelot." The rhyme in this poem is so steady that the fifth line of each stanza almost always ends with "Camelot." Then we get three more rhyming lines in a row (in this case go, blow, below). Finally, we end the stanza with the word "Shalott" which ends almost every stanza (and rhymes with "Camelot" in line 5). It might seem a little complicated at first, but like we say, once you have this down, it works for every stanza in the poem.

Finally, let's take a look at the rhythm of this poem (what English teachers call the meter). This one gets a little trickier than the rhyme. We won't bug you with all the details, but here's a quick overview:

Most of the lines in this poem have eight syllables, although there are a bunch with five or seven too. Tennyson uses two different basic rhythms for these lines. We'll show them to you so you can compare. Again, don't get freaked about these details, just think of them as a part of your poetry toolkit.

The first kind of meter is called iambic. In this meter, if you divide all the syllables in the line into groups of two, the emphasis falls on the second syllable (da DUM). That's how the poem starts out. We'll show you by dividing the syllables up with slashes and putting the stressed syllable in bold:

On ei|ther side | the ri|ver lie
Long fields | of bar|ley and | of rye,

Got that? Feel how the rhythm goes: da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM? How about if we switch it around, and put the stress first? That's exactly what Tennyson does in the beginning of the second stanza:

Willows | whiten,| aspens | quiver,
Little | breezes | dusk and | shiver

Feel the difference there? Now it goes: DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da. We call this kind of meter trochaic. So in fancy English teacher terms, he's switched from iambic to trochaic tetrameter ("tetrameter" just means there are four groups of syllables per line). We're not so worried about the names, though. We just think it's worth tuning your ear a little so you can hear those shifts in rhythm. It's like learning to play your favorite song on a guitar. It helps you see how it's put together, and hopefully makes you love it even more."


And they go on. How interesting is THAT?

So when we get to the crux of the poem,

She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces thro' the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,

           She look'd down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
           The Lady of Shalott.

Even I can see the meter changes. From the regular da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM  She left the web, she left the loom, to a disruption:

 
Out flew the web and floated wide;  

And his use of these devices makes the poem even more powerful. It reminds me of the Ancient Mariner where the actual lines mimicked the story line.

That's really good writing.

And that site has a lot of other things of interest we might want to discuss, too.

I wanted to get this here and this website so that those who were happily nodding along in rhythm could see there is a reason for it.  I also  noticed that in the song, too, the ballad sung  in the heading, she stumbles on some of these changes.

I just love looking at how something is put together. Now the question of what IS a ballad  rears its head, let's find out. Love it.

But there's more!

[ginny]

But now Halcyon, what is this? The Path Guy has led us down the wrong path?


I discovered something when trying to compare the poem line by line.  Only in the path guy's version does the line "Beholding all her own mischance" change to "his mischance" in the later version.  Reading the poem as written on The Poetry Foundation's site and the Camelot Project at the University of Rochester the line originally says "his" and does not change.

Fie! How many versions ARE there?  So it's HIS own mischance? So he is the seer. Who is HE?

The schmoop people offer up yet another interesting segue on this, too, who, they ask, is the NARRATOR of this piece?

What a good question THAT is.

Also Halcyon I think you have a point that it may be over more than one season to show time passing, that's another box checked, thank you.

But you open  up another Pandora's box with this one:

The stanza below was in the 1832 version in Part 1.  Who does the bold section refer to  The Lady or someone in the shallop?


I thought the Lady was in the shallop and the shallop was just another word for rowboat, or skiff or shallow boat,  am I wrong?  

Actually it's interesting to compare the paintings of this event vis a vis the boat, they are quite different. But she is definitely lying down. Let me bring a few here tomorrow.



Barbara I am sorry I missed your "change,"  which is a good one word and Jonathan, I will put up your "whodunit" as well, the deeper we get into this the stronger that word suggests itself to me, too.


Loved the pearls info, lovely.

On the bystanders crossing themselves,  we can see that today.  I have a friend who does that when she sees a dead animal on the road so thought nothing of it here. Should I, tho? Should I ask her exactly what she intends with that, the poem says they crossed themselves with fear, I think that's accurate, I have seen that.  

So who is the Narrator? And now what does "mischance" mean? What IS a ballad? Is this thing in the form OF a ballad or not?

I think it does make a difference if he's coming or going. If he's going TO Camelot he's going to glory, that's the pinnacle, right? So she wants to go too, and she bravely gets in the boat (putting her name on it...why?  Why go out in a storm?

Well heck, look at this, there's no question it's hypothermia, it's a doggone storm!

Part IV.

In the stormy east-wind straining,
The pale-yellow woods were waning,
The broad stream in his banks complaining,
Heavily the low sky raining
           Over tower'd Camelot;
Down she came and found a boat
Beneath a willow left afloat,
And round about the prow she wrote
           The Lady of Shalott.

And down the river's dim expanse –
Like some bold seër in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance –
With a glassy countenance
           Did she look to Camelot.
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
           The Lady of Shalott.

And note, she didn't even untie the boat until dark, so she really must have been miserable. Why do it like this?

Lying, robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right –
The leaves upon her falling light –
Thro' the noises of the night
           She floated down to Camelot:
And as the boat-head wound along
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her singing her last song,
           The Lady of Shalott.

Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darken'd wholly,
           Turn'd to tower'd Camelot;
For ere she reach'd upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
           The Lady of Shalott.

Under tower and balcony,
By garden-wall and gallery,
A gleaming shape she floated by,
A corse between the houses high,
           Silent into Camelot.
Out upon the wharfs they came,
Knight and burgher, lord and dame,
And round the prow they read her name,
           The Lady of Shalott.

Who is this? and what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they cross'd themselves for fear,
           All the knights at Camelot:
But Lancelot mused a little space;
He said, "She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
           The Lady of Shalott."

So she gets TO go to Camelot, singing all the way. It's a storm, it's windy, cold, raining, she's out in the rain, it's after dark, and she lies down with not much on and passes on to Camelot. Why did she put her name on the boat in the last version?  Poor doomed thing.

Can we, dare we, ask why? Why not do this some other way? Is this what YOU would have done? Have you ever done something dangerous like this out of sheer determination? I assume since you're here it turned out all right, thank goodness, but as we all look back on our lives, some of us have taken some pretty silly chances. So WAS she cursed?

I mean she wanted the light, the bells, the shining, the jewels, the jingling, the singing so why did she choose this way?  There are none of those in a cold wet boat in the dark.


Any ideas?

[PatH]

I've had my one word for some time: isolation.  But it's not quite exactly what I mean, so I've been trying to think of a better.  Maybe I should dig up my Roget's Thesaurus.

[ginny]

OH sorry, up it goes! Gee I missed a bunch of them. I think when you all say something I get so excited about what you've said it blocks out stuff (or that's my excuse). Thank you for that!

[nlhome]

"whodunit?" - Maybe not really, but it brought to mind "The Mirror Crack'd" by Agatha Christie, and I believe that title came from this poem and the plot involved a type of cursed life.

I wonder which words he used because they fit the rhyme or the meter better than another choice?

[Jonathan]

'Poor doomed thing. So WAS she cursed? It's a storm, it's windy, cold, raining.'

Wonderful analysis, Ginny. It struck me to see how all nature is reacting to what has come to pass. It was such a serene landscape in the beginning. No, I don't see the entrancement and the 'glassy countenance' as part of a curse. I imagine the effect of a poisonous dart launched by the bow shot. And the 'witch' behind the 'spell' is the jealous Queen Guinevere of Camelot, who is in love with Lancelot.

I believe the reader is expected to know of what's going on in Camelot. In eighteen stanzas the fifth verse ends with Camelot. And in one stanza it ends with Lancelot. In Part III, of course when he comes along strutting his stuff. The queen knows she may be losing him and lays her plan. And out of it came this sad and beautiful ballad.

[BarbStAubrey]

Form and meter is fun to look at - for me remembering why it is even put to use gives me a reason to go back and enjoy it for what it is - all these constructs are there for us to better read and understand the crux of the poem -

When we write and talk we say, 'and then' - 'Oh you wouldn't believe' - 'but' - 'however' - as a way to keep our listener's attention as we finish what we have to say. In poetry there is a rhythm established using rhyme and meter and even form that if you expected to hear the repetition, you will not stop listening till the rhythmical meter is complete.

And so if every line or every other line is ending with a similar sound or a group of lines comes to a conclusion and another group start or any kind of repetition you will read till that grouping comes to a conclusion -

In the stanzas shared above as examples, all four lines use a similar sounding end word until... da da da dah

Under tower and balcony,
By garden-wall and gallery,
A gleaming shape she floated by,
A corse between the houses high,

A change always means - pay attention this is important. Lovely almost gay is the description of the tower, balcony, garden-wall, gallery simply by grouping them together and including the word garden. Then, a different tone - the ending words do not match the first two lines - this is a different pattern using different rhyme endings than the first two lines in the stanzas - what is this about - why are we supposed to sit up and be concerned - 'by' and 'high' keep the two lines together but why different than the first two lines? This early version, he uses the word 'corse' that later becomes 'dead-pale' - what is so significant about her gleaming shape that is a corpse floating under towers and balconies and next to garden-walls and galleries I wonder?

[ClassicsAdmin]

FYI....our Ginny has lost power in this storm raging in the east.  They are in the country, so who knows when power will be restored.  She'll be back when she can, and she hopes you'll all continue on with this great discussion.


Jane

[ginny]

Thanks, Jane, I'm back, I don't know for how long but I'm back (fell off the boat and am now trying to clamber back in. hahaahaa)

I had not really noticed until you mentioned it, Jonathan,  how violently the weather changed. For somebody who takes a lot of notice of omens, that one sort of bypassed her. Or did it?

The Mirror Cracked, that's a good point, nhome, i had forgotten about that Agatha Christie book, does anybody know what the plot is about? Anything to do with our plot here?

  I can sort of see why the stanzas would end in Camelot (as that's the goal) and Lancelot (as he's the trigger) but I don't see Guinevere shooting the bow shot, she's not even in the thing and
besides, the Lady is not visible.  On the other hand, there IS  a curse, and why should there be a curse and strange it should involve Lancelot (I still think he's an innocent party).  Guinevere could be sort of the witch at the Christening type of thing..I wonder if the cracking of the mirror made the Lady think of the curse beginning (it says so) and she just gave up?

I mean she took no precautions,  no cover, no good time to go, she just gave up and went almost in a trance, that would explain the glassy countenance.

Didn't work out well for her. On the other hand...there's the singing...

And then there's the pale corpse floating down the river between the towers. The colors in this thing as Barbara has pointed out, really do make an impact themselves.


Of course, what do I know? How far CAN a bow shoot, anyway?

Can't be too far from Camelot,  why is she called The Lady of  Shalott, anyway?

 Is Shallot something? Somewhere?

Such a beautiful poem the words, the imagery.

One thing nobody mentioned is  loneliness. She's alone. I really am liking Shmoop who has all kinds of great questions.

Look at these:

Questions About Isolation

 1.    Do you think the Lady of Shalott escapes her isolation by the end of the poem?


  2.   Does the magic mirror make her seem more isolated or less? Does that little bit of contact with the world make things worse or better?
 


For one thing, does she actually know she's not going to make it?  Where is this "suicide" stuff coming from, when I read it she's singing.  She's riding down in the boat to the desired place singing. Singing a lot:


Lying, robed in snowy white
  That loosely flew to left and right--
  The leaves upon her falling light--
  Thro' the noises of the night
  She floated down to Camelot;
  And as the boat-head wound along
  The willowy hills and fields among,
  They heard her singing her last song,
  The Lady of Shalott. [18]

  Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
  Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
  Till her blood was frozen slowly,
  And her eyes were darken'd wholly, [19]
  Turn'd to tower'd Camelot;
  For ere she reach'd upon the tide
  The first house by the water-side,
  Singing in her song she died,
  The Lady of Shalott.


Jonathan originally says of course she knows she can't get there unless by dying.


She is singing, not one feeble song, but all the way down to the first house. How far WAS it?

Do you sing when you're unhappy and you think the world has ended?    Could she be so excited that she doesn't mind anything at all but she's finally free and going where she wants to go? And singing while she's doing it. Then it's doubly cruel she doesn't make it.

It's pitiful because she does not have a grasp on the situation unless you read a whole lot into it. Lancelot does not know who she is. She's headed for the glitter and the bright lights and she's singing all the way. Like a lot of other unprepared people since her time.

Whose fault is it she doesn't make it?  The thing is full of "fault." I should have made my one word fault.

A shallop for your thoughts.

[BarbStAubrey]

So glad you are back - it looks like no east wind for you but a north wind with all its icy blow however with enough sense to stay indoors and not go singing in the night drifting down river 

[ALF43]

I agree with Ginny. I do not see a suicide here, only a life that sadly ended. I had the sense that our Lady didn't care.  She was free ; free from the isolation of the castle walls, free from the distortion of the cracked mirror and finally free from the "reflection" of the distant world. She would be musing, sailing down the river, elated!

[Jonathan]

Dead or alive...I'm off to Camelot. The whole purpose of the poem is to get us to Camelot. Isn't that plain, from all the repetition? And this poem did draw Tennyson into the world of Arthurian legend. The death of the Lady does seem like a weird introduction for those of us who want to go on to Tennyson's Idylls.

And then there are times when I wonder if this poem was Tennyson's opium dream. His Kubla Khan, a la Coleridge. Or his Confessions, a la De Quincey. He must have been familiar with both. Perhaps in the next dream the Lady reawakens to her brave new world. The broken mirror could have us wishing that the smoke  gets blown away. I've never seen a poem with so many poetical devices. So many tricks of the imagination. Flesh and blood is hard to find, but it's there. That's revealed by those in Camelot when she arrives. The poor Lady.

[ginny]

Now those are some very astute observations, Jonathan.

I've spent a lot of time (a LOT of time) on sites talking about ballads. It appears the ballad form we have here is not the standard form,  guess  what IS? Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. Stanzas of 4, with alternating  trimeter and tetrameter lines if I recall that right. We don't have that here, and yet more than one site refers to this as a "ballad."

Anybody have any idea why?

Maybe I have not understood what I've read.

Smoke and mirrors, what an interesting thing to imply Jonathan. It iS mysterious, it really is. And that apparently IS one of the characteristics of the ballad..actually.

 Thank you Barbara, no, I am staying way out of boats for a while in these temps.


Jonathan thinks all roads here lead to Camelot. The purpose, says Jonathan,  is to get TO Camelot.  So the "from" Camelot by  Lancelot in one version might take on new meaning, but he's innocent, I can't see him with any blame whatsoever.

Andrea (ALF) says: I had the sense that our Lady didn't care.  She was free ; free from the isolation of the castle walls, free from the distortion of the cracked mirror and finally free from the "reflection" of the distant world. She would be musing, sailing down the river, elated!

Now here's a question for all of us.  What happens when you actually reach your own personal goal, like the Lady did? It took a lot for her to look out, to take those three steps and look at the result. Sometimes we need to be careful what we want because it might not turn out to our benefit and so we have to ask the question that Schmoop did: and it's just as good a question if I had thought of it, at least I'm honest and not pretending I did, but it's a GOOD one:

Is the Lady better or worse off for having realized her dream? And to that we could add would she have been better not to have taken the plunge? In which is she more happy?

And I would have to add what is Tennyson saying here? Now he's been accused of "keeping women down" type of behavior. If this were Lancelot, for example, we'd expect him to bravely break the chains, the mirror, the whole thing and probably sing while he did it. And would his end have been better? I bet you he wouldn't have sailed out in that weather.

SHE only looks out a window, I mean come on, that's all she did. So from her own  point of view is she better off as it ended than staying as she was?

That's a powerful question and it does speak to aging pretty well. I just read a big piece on staying in your own home is better for you than all the fancy retirement centers that are out there.  I am not sure on that one, either.  This question speaks to PatH's one word: isolation.

And now Halcyon has asked about religious inference in this poem, is there any? Are we to draw conclusions (we may as well, the Lady does) from some of the things mentioned here?

What do you think about any or all of these things?

[BarbStAubrey]

Whoops Ginny, your message popped up while I was writing

I guess Jonathan we all have our own Camelot don't we - I like Alf's conclusion - straight forward romantic -

Found this great explanation to understanding the Purpose versus the Meaning of a Poem.

http://classroom.synonym.com/purpose-vs-meaning-poem-3636.html

I like this quote from the last paragraph of this short essay - "At times, inference must play a large role in interpreting the meaning and purpose of a poem. Yet an inference cannot be made without incorporating the reader's own prior knowledge, experiences or bias. Because of its interpretive nature, poetry nearly begs readers to include pieces of themselves in their conclusions."

Thanks for the reminder - I forgot the Halcyon suggested a religious meaning - Today being Ash Wednesday I can easily see this poem as a representation of life as well as, the representation of a spiritual life from awakening to the incorporation of our spirit with universal peace.  

[Frybabe]

Found an old volume by Jessie L. Weston titled, The Legend of Sir Lancelot du Lac, Studies upon its Development, and Position in the Arthurian Romantic Cycle. He did similar book on Sir Gawain and Sir Perceval. She was a folklorist who worked primarily with medieval text pertaining to the Arthurian legends. She would have been 42 when Tennyson passed away, so she was probably familiar with his work.

[ALF43]

Hahaha Ginny - ah that is the question- is the Lady better off or not for following her dream (heart?)
In my opinion we all are.  Many of us are not made to take a middle of the road stance. That's wishy -washy behavior. If you take your stand in the middle of the road, you will be run over!  Go for it, fair damsel. Is death worse than the isolated existence she has encountered?
I've never been much of a dreamer but a big believer in stepping out.

[Halcyon]

I found this scrumptious literary analysis of the Lady.  It also speaks to rhymes and lines and ballads.
http://www.academia.edu/8223377/The_Ballad_of_The_Lady_of_Shalott

Hahaha Ginny - ah that is the question- is the Lady better off or not for following her dream (heart?)
Do you think her dream was to get to Camelot or to get Lancelot?

Love this comment by Poe: "Why do some persons fatigue themselves in endeavours to unravel such phantasy pieces as the 'Lady of Shallot'?

[BarbStAubrey]

Halcyon I think we could all, as a result of our inquiry here write our literary analysis of this work - what do you think? We sure have found so much in this poem.  And I do like the Poe quote - it sounds like something a poet would say as compared to someone critiquing the work of a poet.

I've been on the trail of Frybabe's last post about Jessie L. Weston. Wow, the books written by this author really open the door to making the connections between past poets and newer works - evidently this author's writings about the Arthur Legends was said by Eliot to be his source and constant companion when he wrote the Wasteland. I cannot find the quote now, I read so many sites but his quote on one of those sites did say, that to understand the Wasteland Jessie L. Weston's books should be first read. Seems to me he was specific which book but now I do not remember - I think it was the one written about Arthur. However, Tra La, on Amazon I found for a penny - yep a penny plus shipping of course but for a total of $4 - From Ritual to Romance: The Classic Study of the Arthurian Legend and the Roots of Religion - Weston, Jessie L.

This title and all the other titles from Weston has me thinking and wondering of my own education. I was in High school from '47 to '51 and granted it was a Catholic high school I learned the Arthur legends including this Lady of Shalott as being an analogy to Christianity as a theology (not as an organized religion) as a theology of Salvation, the journey of the soul on earth and we learned many of the Christian symbolisms for which the characters in these legends are metaphors.  So now I am wondering if what and how I learned to understand these poems was because my High School English Lit teachers, Mrs. Kennedy and Sister Ursala possibly read Jessie L. Weston.  To this day the only way I see these characters as real flesh and blood characters is by remembering our visit to NY and seeing the Broadway play Camelot where as if I pick up a book that is about any of the Arthur legend I first thing see the characters as symbols and metaphors.

Another exercise that I think is fascinating - there is a nice poetry writing group in town that I do not attend regularly any more but one of our evenings was a discussion of why we choose a certain form to tell the story that we have in mind - then we chose our own punch line or as a reader would probably see it as the message and incorporated our words using various formats -

Wow was that enlightening as we realized how the story was altered based on the format we chose in addition to what rhyming scheme and how we wrote a line using either enjambment or end-stopped lines - problem writing poetry there is so much, it can take up all your thinking and time so that you never get anything done - I soon realized I would need to live as Virginia Woolf's Room of One's Own suggests - with little to no responsibility except to writing. From the resources found and recommended here that is what Tennyson ended up doing, only marrying after he could afford to have a family and still write.  

The idea of understanding the music of words that he taught himself is to me ground moving and now as I read any poetry, round two of a read, I am conscious of the words chosen to see how their tone adds to the impact of the poem.  

[Frybabe]

Ahhhh, Barb! Now I am going to have to go find Wasteland.

"The music of words".  I like that phrase, very much. Did the minstrels of old set poems to music, or music to poems? Did the ancients, when reciting their poetry or stories, set them to music or accompany them with music or rhythm? I kind of remember touching on this when we discussed several classical Greek plays.  

[PatH]

Which came first--the chicken or the egg?  The music or the words?  I bet it was both ways with the minstrels, making verses to fit popular tunes, and writing music for their verse.

The classical Greek plays had both music and dancing, and were rather like opera.  The actors would sing, and the chorus would both sing and dance, with a lot of structure in the arrangement of the play.  Here's a brief summary of the structure, a reference from our discussion:

http://web.eecs.utk.edu/~mclennan/Classes/US210/Greek-play.html

[PatH]

When we analyzed The Waste Land here, I got From Ritual to Romance, not for a penny, but cheap.  But I was working so hard trying to understand the Eliot that I never got around to reading it.  It must be around here somewhere.