Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Tennyson for Everyone

From Interesting Literature:
Tennyson’s poem ‘The Lady of Shalott’ exists in two versions: a 20-stanza poem published in 1833, and the revised version of 19 stanzas – which is the one readers are most familiar with – which was published in 1842....The poem, partly inspired by Arthurian legend (hence the presence of the knight, Lancelot) and partly by the epic sixteenth-century poem The Faerie Queene written by Edmund Spenser, has been read variously as an allegory about the world of fancy and the world of reality, and as a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, with the idyllic world of magic and legend which Tennyson depicts being threatened by the arrival of new forces. Undoubtedly one of Tennyson’s greatest poetic achievements. (Read more.)
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