Victorian interpretation

That sounds about right -- in an age of belching factories & clattering railroads, maybe there was a nostalgic movement which harkened back to a simpler time, as there have often been in Russia & America. I didn't know about the Arthurian frescoes at Oxford -- now I want to go!!! I have to confess that I am not thrilled with Tennyson's IDYLLS OF THE KING, and that Lady of Shallot thing is so bizarre, when compared to the original myth. Was Tennyson smoking something, or just trying to come up with something original?

Some feminist critics have seized upon the "Lady of Shallot" as a metaphor for the stifling of the Victorian female artistic spirit. She is creative, but isolated from the rest of society. As soon as the outside world (in the form of Lancelot) intrudes, her work is compromised and she is eventually destroyed. Tennyson might also have identified with her as an artist. The tragic, frustrating thing about the Oxford frescoes is that they have largely faded. The Pre-raphaelites might have been brilliant visionaries, but just occasionally you wish they could have spent some time learning the mundane basics of things such as mixing paints correctly! I don't think recent efforts to restore the works have been too successful. Apparently when they were first painted they had the appearance of an illuminated manuscript painted on the wall. William Morris's painting of Jane Burden, later his wife, as Isolde was done at this time (this is the work often misidentified as Guenivere). Some of Rossetti's studies survive, including one of Lancelot, Guenivere and the angel of the Sanct Grail.

"lady of shallot" was the work of a poet who, even on his best day, was more suited by ability for rhyme than insight- and was also barely in his twenties (and reads as such)... it is beautiful, i think, if appreciated with that in mind... while mallory's "morte d'arthur" is undoubtedly superior to "idylls of the king", i don't think one can doubt that mallory's text was the literary inspiration (and primary source) for tennyson's... and i think that tennyson's work probably ranks second among arthurian liter- ature, if one is judging simply by artistic merit... been a long time since i've read either, i admit... but i cannot remember any gross deviations (if you're tweaking tennyson for that particular sin)... surely, there were some, but that is understandable... one reason being the countless other sources of material... but the primary one being, i think, the rather personal relationship the celtic poet can easily (even inevitably) erect with arthur, and his legend... arthur embodied two thousand years of glory and tragedy, and it is natural i think to impart one's own dark view upon all tragedy, much less one as seemingly symbolically important (not to mention malleable) as arthur's... however, don't you think the original myth is, if anything, even more bizarre (and even repugnant, when you think about it, and far more deserving of feminist censure)?... guinnevere is one of history's most unjustly maligned individuals, i think, and (beautiful poetry notwithstanding) it would seem only fitting that feminists attempt to rehabilitate her name... the oxford frescoes sound fascinating, by the way... i'm an admirer of both morris and (especially) rossetti... have read of these, but never seen them (will look them up, next time i'm in a real library)...