Final Creative Project

For my final project I have decided to focus on graphic representations of Tennyson’s “Lady of Shalott”. This poem had a powerful “aesthetic” impact on the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, and inspired many works of art (Jeffers 231). Their paintings of The Lady are not mere “illustrations”, as “good pictures never can be [illustrations]; they are always another poem” (Jeffers 232).  I aim to incorporate aspects of these Pre-Raphaelite depictions into my own work. For example: Rossetti’s representation of the poem crowds the background with swans and a crowd of on-lookers, typical of Pre-Raphaelite compositions (Jeffers 233). Early versions of Tennyson’s poem, included references to the “wild [warblings]” of dying swans, to which The Lady’s dying song is alluded (Tennyson’s Dying Swans).  The swan is an interesting figure, as in mythology, it was empowered to sing at the moment of death in order to allow a transcendence of mortality (Tennyson’s Dying Swans). I aim to create a series of depictions of The Lady, following the narrative of the poem and illuminating some of these inter-textual references.

This poem, among many things, explores concepts of art and its purpose of in society. The poem presents an artist transcending from a place of “static remove” (Jeffers, Nice Threads 55) into the world below and suggests that the consequences are severe. Tennyson creates a work with formal perfections: tetrameter lines with triple rhymes, the hypnotic rhyming of Shallot, Camelot, Lancelot, and a liquidity of sounds (Jeffers, Nice Threads 55). He draws from medieval legends, using the enticing power of these tales as a means of imaginative escape from an England less characterized by imagination or beauty, than its rush for progress. He propagates idealized chivalric codes portrayed in these legends: monogamy, loyalty and courage, but leaves unresolved the true definition of "a code of moral action" in the modern world. As medieval legends and chivalric values were propagated by popular literature, chivalry became a code of behaviour linked to the gentlemanly actions of the Victorian period. Tennyson’s work was also greatly moved by the destruction of the old Palace of Westminster in the 1834 fire, which was rebuilt in a uniquely British and Medieval style  (Tennyson’s Idylls of the King and the Chivalric Code). In the Robing Room of the palace the artist Dyce painted subjects from Malory’s Le Morte, which was the first major depiction of the Arthurian legend since the Middle Ages (Tennyson’s Idylls of the King and the Chivalric Code). Furthermore, Dyce discussed his commission with Stephens, who was the first of the Pre-Raphaelites to paint Arthurian subjects (Tennyson’s Idylls of the King and the Chivalric Code).
http://web.uvic.ca/~vicpoet/virtual-classroom/student-showcase/

Possible Sources:
Goblin Market Graphic Novel

-          Sources from the NINES assignement

-          “Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott and Pre-Raphaelite Renderings: Statement and Counter-Statement” by Thomas Jeffers, in Religion and the Arts 2002

-          “Nice Treads: Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott as artist” by Thomas Jeffers, in The Yale Review 2001