Queer for Art: Tennyson's Poetic Autonomy as Female Same-Sex Desire.

This article examines how Alfred Tennyson’s poems *The Lady of Shalott* (1832) and *In Memoriam* express artistic autonomy through a Renaissance poetic trope of female same-sex desire known as erotic similitude, wherein female lovers are depicted as mirror reflections of each other, producing a solipsistic and temporally suspended sexuality. Tennyson’s use of this feminized homoerotic paradigm contrasts with the contemporaneous male homoeroticism rooted in Hellenistic classical education, reflecting his ambivalence toward aesthetic isolation and the social implications of homosexuality in the Victorian era. The article argues that Tennyson’s portrayal of the Lady of Shalott as a feminized, self-absorbed artist figure who dies upon attempting to engage with the outside world symbolizes the limitations of aesthetic solipsism and female homoeroticism as historically constructed. In *In Memoriam*, Tennyson revises this figure by replacing feminine stasis with a male, productive poetic persona, thereby negotiating the tensions between queer desire, artistic creation, and social engagement. Through close readings and historical context, the article situates Tennyson’s work within nineteenth-century discourses on homosexuality, aestheticism, and gender, highlighting the persistent cultural framing of female homosexuality as sterile and anachronistic compared to male homosexuality’s association with social productivity.