Tirra-Lirrical Ballads: Source Hunting with the Lady of Shalott

Abstract

Early in 1868, two critics were speculating about origin of Alfred Tennyson's already classic Lady of Shalott. Here Frederick James Furnivall writing to William Michael Rossetti with an answer from horse's mouth: As you kindly took trouble about The Lady of Shalott for me, you are entitled to copy of Tennyson's own account:-'I met story first in some Italian novelle: mirror, island, etc., were own.' (1) A notebook from Tennyson's days at Trinity College records, Legends. / The Lady of Scalot. Novelle Antiche, apparently confirming that he had found inspiration in thirteenth-century collection of tales called Cento novelle antiche (One hundred ancient tales). (2) The collection was known in nineteenth century for having inspired many of stories in Boccaccio's 1353 Decameron. Among hundred ancient tales is, indeed, brief novella about damigella di who diet! for love of Lancelot. But no amount of explanation or evidence satisfied scholars, who have doggedly sought additional sources for Tennyson's 1832 ballad. Without discounting connections to novella, they have argued for range of other influences, from Malory romance Tennyson claimed not to have used to Sappho, Spenser, and Shelley. (3) Even avowed Italian source yielded more questions than answers: Was Tennyson working from an Italian-language edition of Cento novelle antiche available to nineteenth-century readers of Italian, or was he working from an English translation of novella in Thomas Roscoe's 1825 The Italian Novelists? What use did he make of two contemporaneous poems by Louisa Stuart Costello and Letitia Elizabeth Landon also derived from novella? (4) And why Italian story missing so many of Tennyson's crucial details: web, mirror, island, etc. that he claimed as my own? (5) These discrepancies led Isobel Armstrong to agnostic conclusion that poem has no source, and in fact conflation of number of mythic structures-but same mismatches have tantalized many other source-hungry critics with prospect of further discoveries. (6) Why did Victorians care so much about origin of this poem, and why do we still care? Perhaps vertigo reader experiences on first learning that this consummately English ballad about England's mythic past so embroiled in Italian literary history. I myself have spent countless hours tracking source of Tennyson's source. On tip from Victorian translator Thomas Roscoe, who suggested that novella was first recorded by Dante's mentor Brunetto Latini, I have searched Latini's work for references to Lady of Shalott-or to variants Scalot and Scalotta-and I have searched for information about Arthurian romance that Latini was thought to own a beautiful copy of. (7) I was hoping to find in poem's shadowy prehistory some clue to form of Lady of Shalott, to learn something more about Tennyson's particular variety of lyrical ballad. But poem's source problems are only replicated in literary history of tale. In choosing story of Lady of Shalott-by whatever means he found it-Tennyson was engaging with source question as much as source. In 1814 History of Fiction, work that Roscoe drew on for his introduction to The Italian Novelists, John Colin Dunlop characterizes Cento novelle antiche as both an origin point and collection of enigmatic histories. It constitutes the first regular work of class [of short fiction] in Europe, and laid foundation of most splendid efforts of human genius. At same time it was not new and original production, compilation of stories already current in world. The diverse tales, from diverse literary cultures, may have been recorded by one author or many, but who these authors were, Dunlop announces, is still problem in literary annals of Italy (my emphasis). …