The Photographic Rewriting of “Merlin and Vivien”: Julia Margaret Cameron’s Photobook of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King

Abstract

This essay examines Julia Margaret Cameron's photographic illustrations of Alfred Lord Tennyson's “Merlin and Vivien” from the Idylls of the King in terms of its aesthetic value which expanded the limited scope of Victorian aesthetic and cultural standards. The essay argues that Cameron's visualization of the poem with her singular photographic style was a modern ekphrastic challenge to form a photobook, which not only brought questions about Victorian gender norms but also paved the way for modernist experiments with images and text. First, the essay investigates the artistic value of Cameron's out-of-focus photographs, which promoted the status of photography to a fine art, after which it explores how Cameron's unconventional artistic photographs became texts in which the illustrator's photographic interpretations of the poem were inscribed. Although Cameron's incongruous photographic illustrations of the poem deviated from the conventions of ut pictura poesis, the essay argues that they newly formed a modern artistic invention, a photobook, mirroring Cameron's artistic practices of photography in the conservative Victorian visual world. While attempting to interpret and analyze the two images of Vivien and Merlin, the essay focuses on the fact that Cameron not only defied the generalized female identity by illustrating her own version of Vivien with unusual behavior but also wished for a reciprocal relationship with male photographers.