Truth and Illusion

Much of Tam Lin’s experience examines the disparity and the imbalance between reality and fantasy, or authenticity and the false projections of fairy glamour. The speaker examines this idea early in the poem when he wonders, “Was it a mask she wore / the whole time I was with her?” (Lines 3-4). In this context, “mask” is both literal and figurative: a device designed to obscure and reshape the face, as well as a manufactured self designed to portray a stylized ideal. The fourth stanza, which occupies more space than the preceding three shorter ones, describes a specific memory in which the speaker was faced with this imbalance in a concrete way. The fairy queen changed shape, or projected an illusion of a new shape, for a brief moment. At this point the speaker doesn’t know which, if either, was the most true...