A Prosodic Study of Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott", The 1832 and 1842 Versions

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

In composition one's mechanics should not be apparent or glaring. Tennyson's mechanics certainly are not. The fact that no one else has done a close study of Tennyson's prosody in “The Lady of Shalott” testifies to the sublety of Tennyson's adroit use of rhyme and meter in this poem. The sublety of his prosody seems to have caused it to escape earlier critical attention. One simply does not notice the prosodic structure of the poem because it is so well done, but the great skill in composing and the great care in revising it become obvious once the two versions are scrutinized. Tennyson adjusted his poem carefully, removing hypercatalectic lines and trimming many lines down to a catalectic state. He removed his caesuras, and then placed two in that rapid slide of verse that appears at the end of the poem, in order to affect a final resistance of the fairy world against the onrush of the real world. He added more trochaic lines and adjusted the trochaic lines which were troubled. He formed a clear leitmotif with trochaic lines in the poem, using them to represent the fairy world and contrasting them to the iambs which represent the real world. He crowned the trochaic leitmotif with the marvelous carol of the dying Lady, the last instance of the trochaic leitmotif. Tennyson reduced the number of perfect lines in the revision and then juxtaposed many of the remaining perfect lines with the trochaic flights in order to contrast the two. Throughout his composition he adhered to Pope's dictum that in poetry sounds must echo sense. Thus my study has supported what critics have been saying about this poem for more than a hundred years: Tennyson's revision was a very skillful and fortunate one and the resultant version is a work of invaluable merit.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• 1. Review of Literature
• 2. Summary of the Literature Review
• 3. A Study of Rhyme: “The Lady of Shalott”
• 4. Conclusions fron the study of Rhyme
• 5. Discussion of Rhyme
• 6. A Study of Metrical Devices
• 7. Conclusions from the Study of Meter
• 8. Discussion of Metrics: Observation on the Revision of “The Lady of Shalott”
• 9. Summary of Observation on Meter