Previous Next

The tone of “The Lady of Shalott” is romantic, which serves to amplify the poem’s ultimate tragedy. To begin, the use of romantic here doesn’t refer only to its conventional meaning, which relates to the feelings of mystery and excitement associated with love. Although “The Lady of Shalott” is in a sense about thwarted amorous desire, the “romantic” elements are more complicated. For one thing, the use of characters from Arthurian legend links the poem to the medieval genre of chivalric romance, which centered on the quasi-fantastical adventures of knights. For another thing, Tennyson also draws from the tradition of British Romantic poetry, using two central points of emphasis: emotional experience and the natural world. Tennyson reveals the influence of the Romantics most powerfully in his marvelous description of Sir Lancelot (lines 73–77):

A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley-sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro’ the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
       Of bold Sir Lancelot.

The references to “bower-eaves” (line 73) and “barley-sheaves” (line 74) comes straight from British Romantic poetry’s fascination with nature. More generally, though, the lushness of the language has an idealizing quality that powerfully suggests the intensity of the Lady’s desire, which flares up just as the sun “flamed upon the brazen greaves” (line 76) of the handsome knight. The combination of lush language, the natural world, intense emotions, and Arthurian legend work together to create a complex “romantic” tone.

Previous section Symbols Next section Structure

Take a Study Break