ABSTRACT
Maud dies about two-thirds of the way through Alfred Tennyson's poem. The protagonist confuses Maud and her shadow because the living Maud is no more. In 'Maud,' something that is unavoidably true of all representation becomes intensely troubling. A representation is not the same as what it represents, but only like it; and, in being like it, is necessarily unlike it too. 'Maud' turns this inevitable state of affairs into an agon. The poem is full of echoes that are undecideable between like and unlike. The likeness to Dante Alighieri is so fugitive and yet so insistent because of the sort of text that 'Maud' is. Yet, just as the poem's anxiety about representation arises from something that is true of all representation, so too does its unlike likeness to Dante elaborate an uncertainty which dogs the whole field of intertextual resemblance.
