The Lady of Shalott | The Quest for the "Nameless" in Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott"
In the following essay, Ann C. Colley explores Tennyson's attempts to move the poem and the reader past the familiar into an undefined realm.
A gleaming shape she floated by,
Dead-pale 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.
The questions "Who is this and what is here?" that the fearful, dull-witted knights, burghers, lords, and ladies are left pondering are those questions which gaze back at the readers of "The Lady of Shalott" long after its fluent lines have drifted away from the closing of the poem. They place...
[The entire page is 3889 words long]
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