SOURCE: Barker, Thomas T. “The Shadow on the Tapestry: Irony in William Morris' The Earthly Paradise.” The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies 2, no. 1 (November 1981): 111-26.
In the following essay, Barker compares The Earthly Paradise to Alfred Tennyson's “The Lotos-Eaters” and Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene to show that Morris's poem is more ironic than escapist in nature.
