“A MAGIC WEB WITH COLOURS GAY”: A QUEER READING OF ALFRED TENNYSON’S AND ELIZABETH BISHOP’S SHALOTT POEMS

Abstract

Mediaeval romances in general, and Arthuriana in particular, have canonically been read as stories of chivalry that depict knights and ladies as the era’s epitome of masculinity and femininity. Queer readings, however, question these assumptions and expose such canonical analyses as heteronormative, gender-binaristic and heterocentric. Queer medievalism subverts the norm, showing how certain thematic and formal elements of mediaeval romances destabilize the heteronormativity of the Arthurian world. Later adaptations of Arthurian legends continue this tendency, revealing the historical constructedness of gender and sexuality. This paper focuses on two adaptations of the Lady of Shalott story – Arthur Lord Tennyson’s influential Victorian poem and Elizabeth Bishop’s 20th-century gender-bent version of it – and shows that, read through the lens of queer theory, the Shalott legend shows the inherent instability of heterocentrism of these mediated mediaeval texts, thus also raising questions about the wider notions of gender, queerness and normativity in connection to history and literary analysis.