Specifically, just why brave Sir Lancelot was moved to sing ‘tirra-lirra, tirra-lirra' as he rode boldly to Camelot – a line that always corpsed the poor soul deputed to chant out that particular line.Īll these years on, I can say that I’m not that much more well-disposed to the poem than I was back in that classroom. I can still do that to order with chunks of the poem but I have no residual memory of ever talking in that classroom about what on Earth the poem was all about. The poem is (or certainly was) a standard for inclusion in secondary school poetry anthologies and I remember English lessons where we were set the task of memorising large chunks of it in order to be able to sit and recite it as if we were a weird religious community chanting some kind of mysterious prayer or incantation.
His interpretation of a 13th century Italian romance Donna di Scalotta which he called The Lady of Shalott, became one of his most famous and influential poems. Indeed, Tennyson’s literary status was such that he not only echoed this wider fascination with all things Arthurian but actually became one of the key influencers of that movement. Tennyson’s fascination with the Arthurian legends picked up on a wider cultural fixation with a sort of cod-medievalism that captured the imagination of artists and writers at the back end of the 19th century – especially the likes of Edward Burne-Jones and what had become known as the Pre-Raphaelite painters.
Posted on The Lady of Shalott by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, illustrated by Bernadette Watts
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