A Comparison of The Lady of Shallot by Alfred Lord...

A Comparison of The Lady of Shallot by Alfred Lord Tennyson, My Last Duchess by Robert Browning, La Belle Dame Sans Merci by Keats and To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell In this essay I am going to compare four poems: 1. The Lady of Shallot- Alfred Lord Tennyson 2. My Last Duchess- Robert Browning 3. La Belle Dame Sans Merci- John Keats 4. To his Coy Mistress - Andrew Marvell The connecting theme of all the poems is that are all written about a woman in love or who is loved by someone else. With the exception of To his Coy Mistress, I would say they are all tragic poems as The Lady of Shallot and My Last Duchess end in death and La Belle Dame Sans Merci has a tragic ending too. The†¦show more content†¦In La Belle Dame Sans Merci and The Lady of Shallot, love is romantic, idealised and magical. The world around the main characters is so magical and unreal that the poem almost seems as though it is lost in a dream. And To his Coy Mistress is like the total opposite as it is about sexual love. The Lady of Shallot was written by Alfred Lord Tennyson between 1809 -1892. The Lady has been locked in a tower and she has had a curse put on her. The curse is that she cannot look directly at Camelot or men and she can only look at it through a large mirror in her tower. So she sits in the tower weaves tapestries of the images she sees. One day she looks directly at Camelot and The curse is come upon [her], so she leaves her tower and this results in her death. Tennyson uses archaic language, with words such as blazond and greaves, to make it seem like a time long ago. This poem is a literary ballad. It shows how some women were treated in the Victorian period; some women were admired from afar and placed on a pedestal but they were not really allowed to enter into society. They were both trapped by society and also admired by it. The Lady is unable to live an active life in this poem. My Last Duchess was written by Robert Browning between 1812 - 1889. Browning was also a Victorian and his poem reflects this period. This poem is a dramatic monologue as it is a