Analysis of Annotations
The following analysis will examine the type and choice of annotations for part two of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s 1833 poem, The Lady of Shalott. For this portion of the project, the audience I had in mind was high schoolers or first-year college students who have ideally, never read any of Tennyson’s poetry. With that audience in mind, the goal of my annotations was to provide the new reader with an immersive and guided reading experience where they w can learn information about the origin of the poem, background about Alfred Lord Tennyson, and have an overall good understanding of the segment of text. To do this, I focused on two main aspects during my annotation process, the medium of annotation/presentation, and the order.
The first step in my annotations was to find different mediums I could use to give the reader information about Tennyson, his history, and the origin of The Lady of Shalott. The mediums I chose varied. I used my own narration to provide comments and context on certain parts of the poem. In addition to this, I provided pictures to give the reader an image of what the setting looked like. Knowing my audience was unfamiliar with Tennyson and his work, I knew I needed to use outside sources and websites to give more thorough information. I decided to use the hyperlink feature to link several articles which gave information about important themes in the poem, its connection to art, as well as information about Tennyson’s writing style. The goal of offering links directly in my annotations was to make the experience of reading the poem and exploring the different articles synonymous. If the reader can read through the poem once, and then read again after absorbing the outside information, they will have a much clearer understanding of the text and the author’s writing decisions.
The next medium I used was biography. I decided it was important to have information about Tennyson’s life particularly because part three of my project attempts to find a connection between the deaths of people close to Tennyson and his writing. The biography offers background on Tennyson as a writer and important information about when he released certain volumes following his losses. The last volume of annotation I used was video. When I was researching for alternative sources, I found information about a painting by John William Waterhouse titled The Lady of Shalott. The video is very interesting and details the history of “The Lady”, Camelot, and the symbols/hidden details in Tennyson Writing. I felt like using a different medium like video, would break up the amount of text the audience has to read.
The second important step of my annotation process was to figure out an effective order for my annotations. Because the excerpt I annotated is part two of the original four-part poem, I decided it made sense to offer context of part 1 early in the document. My next annotations include a biography of Tennyson and images of the setting. I decided that this information would be valuable to see at the beginning of reading if I was reading the text for the first time, so I also put it earlier in the document.
In the middle of the text, my annotations detail context about the character, information about Tennyson’s writing style, and details the poem’s form and symbols. The annotations to the end acknowledge details about the writing such as repetition, rhyme scheme, and lastly, I put an additional article that touches on the death of Tennyson’s father and close friend which he endured during the time of writing several volumes of poetry. I felt like the end of part two of the poem was an effective place to put this information because this is where I first noticed the “darker” tone in Tennyson’s writing. Because part three of the project examines other volumes of poetry before and after Tennyson’s losses, I felt this information was important to include for a first-time reader as they can see a potential connection between Tennyson’s trauma and his writing.