The Lady of Shalott: Key Poetic Devices

Allusion

An allusion (uh-LOO-zhun) is a passing reference to a literary or historical person, place, or event, often made without explicit identification. Perhaps the most obvious allusion in the poem pertains to the world of Arthurian legend. The Lady of Shalott is not a canonical figure in the medieval English and French writings that comprise the main body of Arthurian legend. However, it immediately becomes clear that she lives on an island just upriver from Camelot, the traditional site of King Arthur’s court. There he famously convened his Knights of the Round Table, perhaps the most renowned of which was Sir Lancelot. And indeed, this is precisely the knight who shows up outside the Lady’s window, causing the awakening that leads tragically to her death. In this way, Lancelot’s role in this poem may allude to the role he played in King Arthur’s downfall, which was caused in large part by Lancelot’s affair with King Arthur’s wife.

The other major allusion in the poem is less obvious, and it relates to the way the Lady can only see “shadows of the world” (line 48) in her mirror. The use of the word “shadows” here alludes to the famous “Allegory of the Cave,” which the Greek philosopher Plato wrote about in The Republic. In that work, Plato featured a tale about prisoners who are chained to one wall of a cave and gaze at shadows cast on another wall. The prisoners understand these shadows to be reality. Plato then entertains the possibility that one of the prisoners might be released. Though initially blinded by the sun, their eyes would adjust to the radically different—and more vibrant—reality outside the cave. However, were that same person to return to the cave, their eyes would no longer be adjusted to the dark and wouldn’t be able to see. For this reason, they would never be able to convince the other prisoners of the grander reality beyond their prison. Plato’s tale is an allegory for how easily we misperceive the world around us, often with tragic consequences. The title character of Tennyson’s poem is kept prisoner in her similarly-diminished reality.

Anaphora

Anaphora (ann-AF-fuh-ruh) refers to a rhetorical technique that involves repeating the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses. Tennyson uses this technique to subtle effect at several points in the poem. He commonly employs it in the second half of stanzas, developing a quiet sense of tension that resolves in the final line. As an example, consider lines 24–27:

But who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand?
Or is she known in all the land,
       The Lady of Shalott?

The repetition of “or” here is very simple, but it serves to develop a single thought about the Lady of Shalott, extending it across three lines and thereby creating a pattern of tension and resolution. A similar pattern appears in lines 51–54:

There the river eddy whirls,
And there the surly village-churls,
And the red cloaks of market girls,
       Pass onward from Shalott.

Here again, Tennyson uses the simple repetition of “and” to extend a single thought. In this case, the Lady of Shalott gazes out the window and watches all that passes her by as she remains confined. The use of anaphora quietly amplifies this sense of confinement. A more pronounced example of this technique arises at the poem’s climax, when the Lady of Shalott first lays eyes on Lancelot (lines 109–113):

She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces thro’ the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
       She look’d down to Camelot.

The repetition of the phrase “she + [verb]” evokes the sense of restless desire experienced by the Lady—a restlessness that will directly lead to her activation of the curse.

Epistrophe

In rhetoric, the term epistrophe (eh-PIS-truh-fee) refers to instances where successive clauses end with the same word. Tennyson employs a loose version of this technique to dramatic effect in “The Lady of Shalott.” The poem’s stanzas all have two parts, each of which almost always ends with the same word throughout the poem. For instance, the first part of each stanza has five lines, and in all but one of the poem’s nineteen stanzas the fifth line ends with the same word: “Camelot.” The only exception to this rule is stanza 9, where “Camelot” is replaced by “Lancelot” (line 77). A similar phenomenon appears with regard to the final line of each stanza, which is almost always “Shalott.” Once again, there is only one exception: stanza 12 ends with the words, “Sang Sir Lancelot” (line 108). These two exceptions mark the appearance of Sir Lancelot, who is the object of the Lady’s desire and the ultimate cause of her death. Outside of these exceptions, Tennyson uses a version of epistrophe to underscore the narrative’s tragic inevitability. The Lady will trade her confinement on the island of “Shalott” for the excitement of “Camelot,” but this trade will activate a fateful curse that will take her life.

Refrain

The term refrain refers to any word, phrase, or line that gets repeated over the course of a poem. In Tennyson’s poem, most stanzas end the same way, with the invocation of the title character: “The Lady of Shalott.” After the opening stanza, which concludes with the line, “The island of Shalott” (9), nearly all the stanzas of Parts I and II end with the same refrain. The only other exception is stanza 6, which ends, “Pass onward from Shalott” (line 54). The repeating refrain of “The Lady of Shalott” infuses the title character with an air of tragic inevitability. Intriguingly, it’s only in Part III that this refrain doesn’t predominate. This disruption is notable given that Part III recounts the Lady’s fateful sighting of Lancelot. Four of the five stanzas in this section end with an alternative final line: “Beside remote Shalott” (lines 81 and 90), “Moves over still Shalott” (99), and “Sang Sir Lancelot” (108). Here, the deviation from the refrain evokes the disruption that leads to the Lady’s eventual downfall. Tennyson emphasizes the Lady’s tragic fate by restoring the refrain in Part IV, all six of whose stanzas end the same way: “The Lady of Shalott.”

Simile

A simile (SIH-muh-lee) is a figure of speech that explicitly compares two unlike things to each other. Several similes appear throughout “The Lady of Shalott,” typically in moments where the speaker seems keen to emphasize a particularly important image. Although the poem features a lot of imagery and lush description, Tennyson introduces the figurative language of simile to amplify the poem’s more dramatic moments. For example, when Sir Lancelot first appears in her window, the Lady of Shalott marvels at his ornately-jeweled steed, whose bridle the speaker compares to a starry galaxy (lines 82–84):

The gemmy bridle glitter’d free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy.

Soon after, the speaker invokes a similarly cosmic simile to describe Lancelot himself, likening his movement to that of a meteor blazing through the sky (lines 96–99):

As often thro’ the purple night,
Below the starry clusters bright,
Some bearded meteor, trailing light,
       Moves over still Shalott.

A third simile appears at the crucial moment when the Lady of Shalott boards the boat and looks downstream to Camelot, realizing for the first time that she is doomed to die (lines 127–31):

And down the river’s dim expanse
Like some bold seër in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance—
With a glassy countenance
       Did she look to Camelot.

Here, the speaker likens the Lady to a prophet who witnesses an ominous sign of his own tragic fate.

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