Tennyson's poem "The Lady of Shalott" and Holman Hunt's painting of the same subject are excellent examples of the value of exploring poetry through painting. One of the biggest questions raised in relation to the poem's theme is the problem of its ambiguity. By looking at the painting in class, one can sense the lack of definite boundaries between good and evil and between innocence and malice, while noting that the lady is both a dangerous nymph and a damsel in distress. Other features suggesting ambiguity are the mirror, its reflection of Lancelot, and classical and Christian symbols. From a discussion of different levels of meaning compressed typologically, one can branch out to a larger discussion of myth and the ideas about it and about cultural symbolism since the Victorian age. Another, much more concrete way of using the painting to get to the poem is to scrutinize the former's structure. When structure takes on spatial dimensions, it becomes easier to perceive. One can literally "see" how spatial organizing principles correspond to temporal ones--in this case the use of circles and the trine, or groups of three. After carefully exploring a painting's details, one can make inferences, then form generalizations and generate further research and speculation about painting, poem, and both their aesthetic and their historical contexts. (HTH)