The Lady of Shallot :: Lady of Shalott Essays

The bird of Shallot   Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was known for his pictorial poetry, characterizes as painterly, picturesque with visual detail and images that represent mood, situation and carry feeling (ENG 103 Lecture on Victorian Age and Literature). The imagery of emotion is specially evident in the poets depiction of nature, in the form of melancholy. In examining The Lady of Shallot, the sense of eminent gloom of destiny is illustrated.   Through the personification of nature, a vivid glimpse into a lady doomed by her fate.  A picture is illuminated in the description 0f where the lady dwells. The reader gets a feel for the separation of the lady and her threatening destiny, in the imagery of her subjective surroundings. This can be seen with Wil low-pitcheds whiten, aspens whiten, aspens quiver, /little breezes dusk and shiver (The Longman Anthology Of British Literature, p.1913, LL. 10-11). The revere brought on by quiver and Shiver, suggests the n ature elements know what lies ahead, which is Camelot. The stately destiny of the lady can be visualized with the description of her isolation on an island, in which the river is flowing down to Camelot.   The melancholy brought about by the personification of nature is echoed in the constant imagery of devastation. The picture of the bringer of death preparing for funeral projects the melancholy associated with death.  Nobody can see the lady, yet a hardly a(prenominal) can her song.  The few include a foreshadowing of a funeral attendant, a Willow-veil and natures influence with by the moon the reaper weary (19,33).   Emotions develop finished imagery of the changing weather.  As the lady sees Lancelot, the sky is All in the blue unclouded weather (91). This may depict a dexterous attraction of the lady sees him likened by nature with His broad clear os frontale in sunlight glow (100). However the weather shifts with emotion later the lady discoveries her curse is a melancholic death, when she decides to leave Shallot in pursuit of Lancelot. The imagery, mournful of her destined death with heaven waiting in The pale yellow woods were waning, /The broad streaming his banks complaining, /Heavily the low sky raining.