Abstract
When constructing “The Lady of Shalott”, Tennyson resorts to the medieval atmosphere of King Arthur’s court to set a poem in which the development of the action is dictated by the pervasive force of a mirror. This object, which controls the Lady’s fate, is the one that rules the sense of duality existing in the “The Lady of Shalott”. Indeed, the duplications and contrasts on which the poem is based emerge from the encounter of symmetrical and opposing forces face to face, precisely the type of encounter which lies at the heart of the process of refraction in a mirror. In this sense, the mirror in Tennyson’s poem could be seen not simply as a physical object, but above all as the expression of a motif characterised by the phenomenon of optical repetition and all the processes literally or metaphorically emerging from it. In conflating the Arthurian theme and the exploration of this motif, Tennyson is reviving a pattern which underlies, on different levels, two significant works of the medieval English Arthurian body: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Le Morte Darthur. While in Sir Gawain the mirror is the source of the symmetrical structure of the poem, the influence of the mirror motif in Le Morte appears under the form of a multi-shaped duality. The aim of this paper is to investigate the way in which the mirror motif recurs in these three Arthurian works.
Highlights
Tennyson’s poem “The Lady of Shalott” has been read as a recreation of Plato’s ‘Myth of the Cave’, as a reflection on “the nature and dangers of creative imagination” (Ebbatson, 1988: 45) or even as a literary approach to the pressing question of the impossibility of absolute knowledge; it is, above all, a poem about a mirror
The mirror is the object which accompanies the Lady in her incessant labour of weaving, the instrument that provides her with the “shadows of the world” which she reproduces in her “magic web”, and crucially, the means whereby she can have a glimpse of Sir Lancelot, the image of dazzling light which impels her to
The purpose of this paper is to explore the way in which the mirror, that physical object which articulates Tennyson’s poem, works as a recurring motif in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Le Morte Darthur, revealing a connection among these three works that is based on the conflation of the Arthurian theme and the emergence of the optical reflection of a mirror as a powerfully organising force
Summary
The Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses is published yearly by the Department of English at the University of Alicante in volumes of approximately 250 pages. All correspondence should be addressed to: Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses, Departamento de Filología Inglesa, Universidad de Alicante, P. ● EXCHANGES: The Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses will be happy to make exchange arrangements with similar journals in the same field. All such proposals should be made in writing to the above address. ● SUBSCRIPTIONS: The price of subscriptions for FOUR issues of the Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses is as follows: (1) in Spain, 25€ for libraries and institutions, and 18€ for private subscribers; (2) in countries other than Spain, US $30 for libraries and institutions, and US $25 for private subscribers.
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