Tennyson and the Text The Weaver's Shuttle [Paperback]

This 1992 study of Tennyson concentrates on the image of weaving to explore questions of poetic texture and textuality in his works.Professor Joseph's 1992 study of Tennyson concentrates on the image of weaving to explore questions of poetic texture and textuality in works such as The Lady of Shalott.Professor Joseph's 1992 study of Tennyson concentrates on the image of weaving to explore questions of poetic texture and textuality in works such as The Lady of Shalott.Gerhard Joseph's study takes its major theme from the weaving figure of The Lady of Shalott, which becomes a kind of parable for the author and his texts. Taking its derivation from the Latin, texere, to weave, Professor Joseph's focus on poetic texture and a sense of textuality (both in Tennyson's individual works and the larger poetic tapestry of his oeuvre) leads also to a consciousness of his own critical and interpretative weaving, bringing out a new pattern in the fabric of Tennyson's work. This brings together a theory of perception with an analysis of the gendering of Tennyson's characters, and engages with the methodologies of deconstruction, psychoanalysis, and gender theory. The weaving metaphor is used to open up a key theoretical question regarding Tennyson's poetics and the relationship of authorial intention to the unseen hand of an all-pervasive textuality.Preface: from strange diagonal to weaver's shuttle; Part I. Victorian Warp: Perception: 1. Tennyson's stupidity - and ours; 2. Dream houses of 'etherisity': Poe and Tennyson; 3. The aesthetic of particularity and the aesthetic of vagueness: the owl and the eagle; 4. The sharp and the blurred: Julia Margaret Cameron and Tennyson; 5. The mirror and the echo en abyme in Victorian poetry interweave - my lady('s) shuttle: the alienation of work into text; Part II. Victorian Woof: Representative Men and Mystified Women: 6. Homeric competition: mythic reflections of representative men; 7. From sensuous idea to mythic woman: knowledge, lCZ