The Quest for the "Nameless" in Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott"

At the end of "The Lady of Shalott," the questions "Who is this? and what is here?" (1. 163) place the unsuspecting reader among the citizens of Camelot, looking uneasily at the Lady's inscribed name. The possibility of being identified among the dull, limited citizens tempts the reader to separate himself from them and prompts him to attempt to step into the Lady's boat. In this attempt, he moves to a reading, the impulses of which are similar to those that press the Lady through the poem. These impulses reflect the movement from the doubly enclosed, piecemeal images visible from the tower to the more definite vision in the last section of the poem. The reader is motivated by a desire to move from a synecdochic and metonymic space to a metaphoric landscape. But the reader cannot remain here, for this metaphoric vision destroys itself and dies with the Lady. In the end, this destruction places the reader closer to Tennyson's dilemma, and together poet and reader stare at the name more aware than ever of their inability to reach the non-representational and of their bondage to mortal limits.