1809-1892
Victorian era Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland
This statue of Tennyson is part of his memorial at Trinity College Chapel, Cambridge
A ballad on one of Tennyson's favorite subjects, Arthurian legends
The mirror as symbol
distance and isolation as themes
consider the nature of the lady's curse and the one thing that leads her to risk her life
does the poet identify with the lady?
blank verse; dramatic monologue
Ulysses = Odysseus (from Homer's Odyssey; also found in Homer's Iliad and Dante's Inferno, where he is punished among the false counselors and condemned for abandoning his family)
Is Ulysses heroic?
John William Waterhouse's The Lady of Shalott, 1888
Waterhouse's The Lady of Shalott Looking at Lancelot, 1894
Waterhouse's "I Am Half-Sick of Shadows," Said the Lady of Shalott
The Funeral of Shelley, Louis Edouard Fournier, 1889; pictured in the centre are, from left, Trelawny, Hunt and Byron; Mary Shelley is kneeling behind the three male mourners.