Study guide
Idylls of the King
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Overview
- Author
- Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892), Poet Laureate from 1850, created Baron Tennyson in 1884
- Form
- A cycle of twelve narrative poems in blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter), with a verse dedication and an epilogue; songs in rhyme are set into several idylls
- Composition
- Over half a century: the 'Morte d'Arthur', drafted in 1833–34 after the death of Arthur Hallam, appeared in 1842; the last idyll, Balin and Balan, in 1885; the final order was fixed in the edition of 1891
- First publication
- Idylls of the King (1859): Enid, Vivien, Elaine and Guinevere; further idylls in 1869 (dated 1870), 1871–72 and 1885
- Dedication and epilogue
- Dedication to the memory of Prince Albert (1862); epilogue 'To the Queen', addressed to Victoria (1873)
- Sources
- Chiefly Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur; the Welsh tale of Geraint from Lady Charlotte Guest's translation of the Mabinogion; Geoffrey of Monmouth for Arthur's birth and the British past
- Setting
- A legendary Britain of the fifth and sixth centuries, from Arthur's crowning and marriage to the last battle in the west; the action moves through the seasons from spring to winter
- Design
- 'The Coming of Arthur', ten idylls under the heading 'The Round Table', and 'The Passing of Arthur': the rise, corruption and fall of an ideal order
- Tennyson's description
- 'Sense at war with Soul': in his comments, reported by his son Hallam in the Memoir (1897), Arthur stands loosely for the soul and the Round Table for the passions and capacities of a man
- Famous lines
- 'The old order changeth, yielding place to new'; 'We needs must love the highest when we see it'; 'From the great deep to the great deep he goes'
Context
Tennyson lived with the Arthurian legend for almost his whole writing life. As a young man he planned an Arthurian epic or music-drama, and after the sudden death of his friend Arthur Hallam in 1833 he wrote the 'Morte d'Arthur', the story of the dying king carried away on a barge. When it was published in Poems (1842) he set it inside a modern frame, 'The Epic', in which a poet has burned his twelve-book Arthurian epic as out of date, and only this eleventh book has been saved from the fire. The frame both apologises for the medieval subject and announces an ambition: twelve books, the number of Virgil's Aeneid and Milton's Paradise Lost (Ricks 1987) (Martin 1980).
The epic was in the end written not as one continuous poem but as a series of 'idylls', a word Tennyson took from the Greek eidyllion, a 'little picture'. The first volume, Idylls of the King (1859), contained four portraits of women: Enid, Vivien, Elaine and Guinevere, the true and the false set against one another. After Prince Albert's death in December 1861 Tennyson added a verse Dedication to his memory (1862). The Holy Grail and Other Poems (1869, dated 1870) added The Coming of Arthur, The Holy Grail, Pelleas and Ettarre and The Passing of Arthur, which absorbed the old 'Morte d'Arthur'; The Last Tournament (1871) and Gareth and Lynette (1872) followed, and in 1873 came the epilogue 'To the Queen'. Enid was later divided into two poems, and Balin and Balan, written in the 1870s, appeared only in 1885. The edition of 1891 fixed the final order of twelve, with the ten central idylls grouped as 'The Round Table' (Ricks 1987) (Gray 1983).
Tennyson's main source was Malory's Le Morte Darthur, which he had known since boyhood, but he freely changed what he found. The two Geraint idylls come from the Welsh tale of Geraint son of Erbin in Lady Charlotte Guest's English Mabinogion (1838–49), and the mystery of Arthur's birth draws on Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain. He removed the incest by which, in Malory, Arthur fathers Modred, made Arthur blameless, and made the adultery of Lancelot and Guinevere the single sin from which the ruin of the whole order spreads (Staines 1982) (Eggers 1971). In the epilogue he contrasts his own Arthur, 'Ideal manhood closed in real man', with the warrior king of Welsh legend and with the king 'of Geoffrey's book, or him of Malleor's'.
The poem was written for a Victorian public and spoke to its concerns. Its central story is a marriage betrayed, and its women are measured against a domestic ideal of fidelity; its king is a reformer who brings law into a wild land; its Grail quest raises the question whether spiritual vision leads away from duty. Tennyson explained to friends, in remarks his son Hallam later printed in the Memoir (1897), that the poem shadowed the war of sense against soul, and that Arthur should be read as the soul and the Round Table as the passions and powers of a man; but he also insisted that the allegory was not a fixed code and that readers should find their own meanings (Tennyson 1897) (Rosenberg 1973).
The Idylls were the most popular long poem of their age; the 1859 volume sold some ten thousand copies within weeks of publication. They were also, from the start, a target. Swinburne mocked the moralised king and called the work 'Morte d'Albert, or Idylls of the Prince Consort', and in the twentieth century the Idylls were for decades treated as the most dated part of Tennyson's work. Since the 1960s critics such as Clyde Ryals, John Rosenberg and James Kincaid have read them instead as a dark and searching poem about the failure of ideals, and their place in the Victorian revival of Arthurian legend, alongside Morris, Swinburne and the Pre-Raphaelite painters, has been studied in detail (Swinburne 1872) (Ryals 1967) (Taylor 1983).
Plot overview
Britain is a land of warring petty kings and wild beasts when the young Arthur, whose birth is a mystery, is crowned, founds the Round Table and marries Guinevere, daughter of Leodogran of Cameliard. His knights swear to reverence the King as their conscience, to live chastely and to right wrongs, and for a time the realm flourishes. Young Gareth, Arthur's nephew, serves as a kitchen-knave to prove his worth and wins the scornful Lynette by his deeds; Geraint marries Enid and, after a harsh test of her loyalty, learns to trust her.
But a rumour runs through the court: the Queen loves Lancelot, Arthur's greatest knight. The rumour poisons trust. Balin, trying to tame his own violence, sees the lovers in a garden, hears Vivien's slanders, and goes mad; he and his brother Balan kill each other without recognising one another. Vivien, the enemy of the court, seduces the aged Merlin and imprisons him in an oak in the forest of Broceliande. Elaine of Astolat dies of love for Lancelot, who is bound by his love for the Queen.
A nun's vision of the Holy Grail sends most of the knights away from their duties on a quest that only a few can achieve. Galahad passes into the spiritual city, Percivale becomes a monk, Lancelot sees the Grail only veiled, and many never return. In the empty court the decline accelerates. Pelleas, betrayed by Ettarre and by Gawain, loses his faith in the vows and becomes the Red Knight who mocks the Round Table; at the Last Tournament the rules of courtesy are ignored, and Tristram is killed by King Mark.
Guinevere flees to the convent at Almesbury, where Arthur comes to forgive her and to take his leave before the war with his nephew Modred. In the last battle, fought in a cold mist on the western coast, the Round Table perishes; Arthur kills Modred and is mortally wounded. Bedivere, the last of the knights, throws Excalibur into the lake at the King's command, and Arthur is carried away on a black barge by three queens, perhaps to the island-valley of Avilion, perhaps to death.
Part by part
Part 1: Dedication
Dedication
Summary
Tennyson dedicates the Idylls to the memory of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's husband, who had died in December 1861. He suggests that the Prince valued the poems because he found in them, without knowing it, an image of himself, and that he seems 'Scarce other than my king's ideal knight', a man who obeyed his conscience, redressed wrong, avoided slander and loved one woman only.
The poem then praises Albert's modesty, his patronage of science and art, and his public service, especially the Great Exhibition of 1851, and closes by asking the widowed Queen to find comfort in his memory and in the love of her children and people.
Analysis
The Dedication was added to the edition of 1862, three years after the first idylls appeared, and it changed how the whole poem would be read. By identifying the Prince with Arthur's ideal knight, and by quoting almost word for word the vows that Arthur later recalls in 'Guinevere', it invites readers to see the king as a portrait of Victorian virtue. The comparison gave Swinburne his gibe about 'Morte d'Albert', and it remains the clearest sign of how closely the Idylls were tied to the court and the moral ideals of their time (Martin 1980) (Swinburne 1872).
It is also a public elegy, in the line of In Memoriam (1850), written by the Poet Laureate on a national loss. The phrase 'sublime repression of himself' captures an ideal of self-command that runs through the poem, and that later readers would question.
Scarce other than my king’s ideal knight, “Who reverenced his conscience as his king; Whose glory was, redressing human wrong;
Albert is identified with the knight of Arthur's vows; the same words return in Arthur's speech to Guinevere.
With what sublime repression of himself, And in what limits, and how tenderly;
Self-restraint as the highest public virtue: the ideal that the Idylls both celebrate and test.
Part 2: The Coming of Arthur
The Coming of Arthur
Summary
Leodogran, king of Cameliard, is beset by heathen hosts and wild beasts, and the young King Arthur rescues his land. Arthur has seen Leodogran's daughter Guinevere and asks for her hand, but Leodogran hesitates, because rumour says that Arthur is not the true son of Uther. He hears several accounts: from Arthur's knights, from Bellicent, Queen of Orkney and Arthur's half-sister, who describes the founding of the Round Table and Arthur's sword Excalibur, and from Bleys, Merlin's master, who saw a naked babe borne in on a flaming wave to Merlin's feet at Tintagil. Merlin himself answers questions only in riddling triplets.
A dream settles Leodogran's mind, and Lancelot is sent to bring Guinevere to Camelot, where she and Arthur are married in May. The knights sing a triumphant song, and Arthur refuses the Roman ambassadors who come to demand tribute, declaring that the old order changes.
Analysis
The poem opens the cycle with a question it never answers: who is Arthur, and where does he come from? The witnesses contradict each other, and Merlin's riddle, 'From the great deep to the great deep he goes', makes uncertainty the condition of faith. Arthur's authority rests not on proven birth but on what his knights believe; when belief fails, as it will, the realm will fail with it (Rosenberg 1973) (Culler 1977).
The idyll is set in spring and ends with a wedding in May. Its chorus of knights, 'Blow, trumpet, for the world is white with May', is the high point of hope in the poem. Yet even here there are shadows: Lancelot, not Arthur, fetches the bride, and Arthur's words to the Romans, 'The old order changeth, yielding place to new', will be repeated by the dying king at the end of the cycle with a quite different meaning.
Rain, sun, and rain! and the free blossom blows: Sun, rain, and sun! and where is he who knows? From the great deep to the great deep he goes.
Merlin's riddle about Arthur's origin and end; the last line recurs in 'The Last Tournament' and 'The Passing of Arthur'.
Blow, trumpet, for the world is white with May; Blow trumpet, the long night hath rolled away!
The wedding song of the knights: the spring of the cycle and its moment of greatest confidence.
Part 3: Gareth and Lynette
Gareth and Lynette
Summary
Gareth, youngest son of Lot and Bellicent, longs to join Arthur's knights. His mother, wishing to keep him at home, sets him a humiliating condition: he must serve a year in Arthur's kitchens under Sir Kay without revealing his name. He goes to Camelot, a city of shifting, enchanted gates, and Arthur, told the secret, agrees. When the damsel Lynette comes to ask for Lancelot's help against the knights who besiege her sister Lyonors, Gareth claims the quest, and she rides off in disgust with a kitchen-boy.
On the road Lynette mocks him continually, but Gareth defeats the knights who guard the river crossings, the Morning Star, the Noonday Sun and the Evening Star, and finally the dreaded Death, who proves to be a frightened boy in painted armour. Lynette's scorn turns to admiration, and the poem ends by noting that one teller says Gareth married Lyonors, a later one Lynette.
Analysis
This is the most cheerful of the idylls, a story of youthful aspiration in which faith in the King is rewarded. Gareth's vow, 'Live pure, speak true, right wrong, follow the King', states the ideal of the Round Table at its simplest. The knights he fights, named after times of day, and the final Death that is empty within, form an allegory of the stages of life and of the fear of death that courage dispels (Kincaid 1975).
The description of Camelot, where the city seems to Gareth's companions to be built by enchantment and Merlin tells them that it is built 'To music, therefore never built at all, / And therefore built for ever', introduces an idea central to the poem: the realm exists only as long as people believe in it. Gareth's comic, loving quarrel with Lynette also shows Tennyson using a lighter tone, and a happier model of courtship, against which the later failures of love will be measured.
Follow the deer? follow the Christ, the King, Live pure, speak true, right wrong, follow the King— Else, wherefore born?
Gareth to his mother: the code of Arthur's knighthood in a single line.
Thou art the kingliest of all kitchen-knaves.
Lynette's mockery finally becomes praise: worth, not birth or station, makes the knight.
Part 4: The Marriage of Geraint
The Marriage of Geraint
Summary
Geraint, a tributary prince of Devon and one of Arthur's knights, is happily married to Enid, whom Queen Guinevere loves. When rumours about the Queen and Lancelot begin to spread, he fears that Enid may be corrupted by her friendship with the Queen and takes her home to his own lands, where he neglects his duties for her company. One morning Enid, lamenting over his sleeping form that she has made him idle, says that she fears she is no true wife; he wakes to hear only those words and suspects her of infidelity. He orders her to put on her oldest dress and ride with him into the wilderness.
The story then goes back to how they met. Riding in the Queen's company, Geraint followed an insolent knight whose dwarf had struck the Queen's maid. He came to the ruined castle of the impoverished Earl Yniol and his daughter Enid, who sang of Fortune's wheel; defeated the knight, Edyrn son of Nudd, in the tournament of the Sparrow-hawk; and married Enid in her faded silk dress, which the Queen then replaced with splendid robes.
Analysis
The story comes from the Welsh tale of Geraint son of Erbin in Lady Charlotte Guest's Mabinogion, but Tennyson ties it to the main plot by making the Queen's suspected adultery the cause of Geraint's jealousy. The rumour at court infects a marriage far away: this is the first sign of the way a single sin spreads through the whole realm (Staines 1982) (Hair 1981).
Enid's song of Fortune, sung in poverty, sets out the poem's ideal of patient virtue, indifferent to rise and fall. Tennyson's handling of Enid, obedient, silent and long-suffering, made her for Victorian readers the perfect wife; modern critics have been less comfortable with the poem's admiration for her endurance of Geraint's suspicion (Gilbert 1983).
Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel and lower the proud; Turn thy wild wheel through sunshine, storm, and cloud; Thy wheel and thee we neither love nor hate.
Enid's song in her father's ruined hall: dignity in poverty and acceptance of change.
Part 5: Geraint and Enid
Geraint and Enid
Summary
Geraint rides out with Enid ahead of him, forbidding her to speak. Repeatedly she sees robbers lying in wait and, disobeying him out of love, warns him; he fights and defeats them. They meet the lustful Earl Limours, once Enid's suitor, who plots to kill Geraint, and Enid again saves him by warning him at night. Wounded and exhausted, Geraint falls as if dead, and the brutal Earl Doorm carries them to his hall, where he tries to force Enid to eat and drink and to marry him. When she refuses, he strikes her, and Geraint, who has revived and has been lying still to test her, feigning death, rises and kills him.
Husband and wife are reconciled; Geraint confesses his error, and Edyrn, now a reformed knight of Arthur's, escorts them to the court. Geraint lives happily with Enid until he dies fighting for Arthur against the heathen of the north.
Analysis
The idyll begins with a rare direct comment by the narrator, 'O purblind race of miserable men', on how people torment themselves with false suspicion. The journey is a test of Enid's faith that is really a test of Geraint's, and the poem turns on the reversal by which the man who doubts his wife must be rescued by her again and again (Culler 1977).
The figure of Edyrn, once proud and violent and now transformed by Arthur's court, shows the civilising power of the Round Table at work. That the cure works on Edyrn but the court's own sin keeps spreading is one of the ironies on which the whole design depends.
O purblind race of miserable men, How many among us at this very hour Do forge a life-long trouble for ourselves,
The opening of the idyll: the narrator generalises from Geraint's jealousy to human self-deception.
Part 6: Balin and Balan
Balin and Balan
Summary
The brothers Balin and Balan return to Arthur's court after exile. Balin, called the Savage for his violent temper, tries to learn gentleness by imitating Lancelot and takes the Queen's crown as the emblem on his shield. While Balan rides away to fight a demon said to haunt the woods, Balin sees Lancelot and Guinevere together in a garden, and his faith in them is shaken. At the castle of King Pellam, who has turned from the court to relics and asceticism, he is insulted by Pellam's son Garlon and kills him.
In the forest he meets Vivien, on her way to Camelot, who tells him lying tales of the Queen and Lancelot. In despair Balin tramples the crown on his shield and utters a terrible cry; Balan, hearing it, takes him for the wood-demon, and the brothers fight. Each mortally wounds the other before they recognise one another, and they die in each other's arms.
Analysis
Written last, in the 1870s, and published in 1885, the idyll was placed before 'Merlin and Vivien' to provide the link that the earlier sequence lacked: it shows the first knight destroyed by the rumour and brings Vivien to court. Balin's struggle to master his savagery by following an ideal makes him an image of the self-discipline the Round Table demands, and his ruin shows what happens when the ideal is discovered to be false (Ricks 1972) (Rosenberg 1973).
The two brothers, one wild and one steady, have often been read as two parts of a single self, and their mutual destruction as the soul divided against itself. The scene in the garden, where the Queen speaks of roses and Lancelot of a dream of a saint holding a 'spiritual lily', introduces the floral symbolism of passion and purity that runs through the middle idylls.
Goodnight! for we shall never bid again Goodmorrow—Dark my doom was here, and dark It will be there.
Balin's dying words to his brother: the first tragedy of the court, caused by slander.
Part 7: Merlin and Vivien
Merlin and Vivien
Summary
Vivien, the daughter of a man killed fighting Arthur and an enemy of the court, has learned at King Mark's court in Cornwall to believe that no one is pure. After spreading rumours at Camelot she follows the aged Merlin, who is oppressed by forebodings, to the forest of Broceliande in Brittany. She wants him to teach her a charm by which a person can be imprisoned for ever.
Through a long day of flattery, caresses, tears and accusations she tries to win the secret. She slanders the knights of the Round Table one by one; Merlin defends them, but grows weary. When a storm breaks over the forest she clings to him in apparent terror, and he yields and tells her the charm. She uses it at once, and Merlin lies imprisoned in the hollow oak, 'lost to life and use and name and fame', while she runs off crying 'fool'.
Analysis
First published in 1859 simply as 'Vivien', the idyll shocked some early readers with its frank portrait of seduction. Vivien embodies the cynicism that believes no ideal is real, and her victory over Merlin, the mind and art of the realm, shows intellect overcome by sense. Her song of 'the little rift within the lute', ostensibly about love, describes the way the poem's single sin spreads until all its music falls silent (Kincaid 1975) (Gilbert 1983).
Feminist critics have read Vivien as the figure through which the poem projects onto a woman the dangers of sexuality, but she is also the clearest critic of the court's hypocrisy, and her slanders contain a grain of truth: the rumour about the Queen is true.
It is the little rift within the lute, That by and by will make the music mute, And ever widening slowly silence all.
Vivien's song: a small flaw grows until it destroys the harmony, an image for the whole cycle.
Behind her, and the forest echoed “fool.”
The last line of the idyll: Merlin's wisdom ends in a single mocking word.
Part 8: Lancelot and Elaine
Lancelot and Elaine
Summary
Arthur holds a tournament for the last of nine great diamonds. Lancelot, who has said he will not compete, is persuaded by Guinevere to go in disguise. At Astolat he borrows a blank shield and wears the red sleeve of Elaine, the lord's daughter, as a token, which he has never done for any woman. He wins, but is badly wounded by his own kinsmen, who do not recognise him. Elaine finds him and nurses him back to health, and falls helplessly in love.
Lancelot, bound by his love for the Queen, cannot return her love and leaves her. Elaine dies, and at her request her body is laid on a barge with a lily in her hand and a letter, and steered by a dumb servant down the river to Camelot. Guinevere, who in jealousy had just thrown the nine diamonds into the river, sees the barge pass; the court reads the letter, and Lancelot, alone, reflects bitterly on his bondage.
Analysis
Elaine, 'the lily maid of Astolat', is the counterpart of Tennyson's early 'Lady of Shalott', the woman who dies of a love she has chosen. Her pure devotion is set against the guilty love of the Queen, and Lancelot's paradox is summed up in the poem's most famous antithesis: 'His honour rooted in dishonour stood, / And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true', an antithesis typical of the late Tennyson's style (Culler 1977) (Shaw 1976).
Lancelot's protest to the King that 'free love will not be bound', and Arthur's reply that such love, 'so bound, were freest', are answered by the poem itself, in which every love is bound in some way, by vows, by guilt or by death. The floating funeral barge, painted many times by Victorian artists, anticipates the barge that carries Arthur away at the end.
Elaine the fair, Elaine the loveable, Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat,
The opening: Elaine is named three times, as if in a litany, before the action begins.
His honour rooted in dishonour stood, And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.
Lancelot's divided loyalty, caught in paradox: fidelity to the Queen is betrayal of the King.
Part 9: The Holy Grail
The Holy Grail
Summary
Sir Percivale, now a monk, tells the story of the Grail quest to a fellow monk, Ambrosius. His sister, a nun, had a vision of the Holy Grail, the cup of the Last Supper, and passed her ardour to the young Galahad. While Arthur was away, the Grail appeared veiled in the hall in a storm of light, and Percivale, Galahad, Lancelot, Gawain and most of the knights swore to seek it for a year and a day. Arthur returned and was dismayed; he warned that most of them would follow 'wandering fires' and that the Round Table would be left empty.
Percivale tells of his journey: every pleasure he approached turned to dust, until he saw Galahad pass into the spiritual city. The returning knights give their accounts. Bors saw the Grail in a prison; Lancelot, mad with his sin, saw it only veiled and burning; Gawain gave up and amused himself. Arthur ends by speaking of the king's duty to stay at his work, while allowing that visions may come when the work is done.
Analysis
The idyll is the spiritual centre of the cycle and its most debated part. Tennyson's own view, reported in the Memoir, was that the quest showed how religious enthusiasm, pursued for its own sake, could draw men from the duties nearest to them; but the poem gives great power to the visions themselves. Telling the story through Percivale, and then through the reports of others, makes everything uncertain: no one, except perhaps Galahad, sees the Grail fully (Tennyson 1897) (Rosenberg 1973).
The poem reflects Victorian religious debate, between ascetic and practical forms of faith, and between faith and doubt. Arthur's closing speech, in which the world itself seems to become insubstantial in the light of vision, is one of the most complex passages in Tennyson and has been read both as a defence of duty and as a confession of mystical experience.
Unchallenged, while ye follow wandering fires Lost in the quagmire!
Arthur's warning: the quest is compared to will-o'-the-wisps that lead travellers into marshes.
Let visions of the night or of the day Come, as they will;
Arthur on the duty to finish one's work before seeking vision; the speech goes on to describe his own visions.
Part 10: Pelleas and Ettarre
Pelleas and Ettarre
Summary
Pelleas, a young lord from the isles, comes to court and is knighted to fill one of the places left empty by the Grail quest. He falls in love with the beautiful and worldly Ettarre, wins her the prize at a tournament, and believes she loves him; she only uses and then scorns him, shutting him out of her castle. Gawain offers to help him by pretending to have killed him and winning Ettarre's heart for him, but instead becomes her lover.
Pelleas finds them asleep together in a pavilion and, instead of killing them, lays his naked sword across their throats. He rides off in despair, cursing the Round Table, and learns from Percivale that the Queen herself is false. When he meets Lancelot he challenges him and is beaten, and he bursts into the hall at Camelot crying 'I have no sword'. Modred thinks that his time is near.
Analysis
Pelleas is a second Gareth, a young idealist who comes to court in spring, but his story ends in disillusion rather than triumph. The poem is set in late summer and autumn, and its imagery of decay marks the turning of the cycle. In Tennyson's design Pelleas becomes the Red Knight of 'The Last Tournament', the knight who founds a mocking anti-Round Table in the north (Kincaid 1975).
Gawain's betrayal shows the vows of the Round Table broken by one of its leading knights, and Pelleas's discovery that the Queen is guilty takes away the last ground of his faith. The ending, with the lovers looking at each other in silence, shows the court aware of its doom.
Looked hard upon her lover, he on her; And each foresaw the dolorous day to be:
Guinevere and Lancelot after Pelleas's outburst: the guilty lovers recognise the coming catastrophe.
And Modred thought, “The time is hard at hand.”
The last line: the traitor waits for the realm to fall apart.
Part 11: The Last Tournament
The Last Tournament
Summary
In autumn, Lancelot presides over the 'Tournament of the Dead Innocence', whose prize is a carcanet of rubies once found on a dead baby. Arthur has ridden north against the Red Knight, who rules a lawless tower and mocks the Round Table. Without the King the tournament is played without courtesy, and Tristram wins, scorning the rules and the ladies. Arthur's fool Dagonet dances and jests, mocking Tristram and the court, and calls the King a fool for believing he could make men pure.
Arthur reaches the Red Knight's tower, but his knights massacre the Red Knight's followers in a frenzy of violence that the King cannot restrain. Tristram meanwhile rides to Tintagil to meet Isolt, the wife of King Mark, and as he bends to kiss her Mark cleaves his brain from behind. Arthur returns home in the dark to find the Queen gone, and Dagonet weeping at his feet.
Analysis
The poem shows the realm in full decay. The season is autumn, the tournament is joyless and ironic, and the songs of 'free love' express the code of the knights who no longer believe in their vows. Tristram's cynical song, with its refrain 'Free love—free field—we love but while we may', directly answers Arthur's ideal of a love bound by faith (Rosenberg 1973).
Dagonet, the fool who sees the truth, is one of Tennyson's finest creations. He claims to be the only true knight left because he is the only one who does not pretend; and his last words, 'I am thy fool, / And I shall never make thee smile again', show that even the fool is now overcome by grief. The massacre in the north shows the Round Table becoming the very savagery it was founded to suppress.
Free love—free field—we love but while we may: The woods are hushed, their music is no more: The leaf is dead, the yearning past away:
Tristram's song: the doctrine of free love sung in an autumn of dead leaves.
I am thy fool, And I shall never make thee smile again.
Dagonet's last words to the King: the jester's laughter ends in grief.
Part 12: Guinevere
Guinevere
Summary
Guinevere has fled from the court and hides in the nunnery at Almesbury, where only a young novice, who does not know who she is, keeps her company. Modred had trapped her with Lancelot, and the lovers parted for ever, Lancelot going to his own lands, she to the convent. The novice chatters about the court and the Queen's sin, and sings a song of the foolish virgins who arrive too late for the wedding feast.
Arthur arrives on his way to the war against Modred. As the Queen lies at his feet, he describes the order he founded, the vows of his knights and the ruin her sin has brought on it; he forgives her, as God forgives, and says farewell, hoping to meet her in heaven. After he leaves, she recognises too late that she should have loved him, the highest, rather than Lancelot. She becomes abbess of the convent and dies three years later.
Analysis
This scene was the climax of the first volume of 1859 and was the idyll Victorian readers most admired. Arthur's long speech, at once tender and judging, has also been the main ground for those who call him a prig: he lectures a prostrate woman about the damage she has done to his realm. Modern readers have often sympathised instead with Guinevere's earlier complaint, in 'Lancelot and Elaine', that Arthur was too perfect to love (Gilbert 1983) (Ricks 1972).
The poem's view of marriage, adultery and female guilt reflects Victorian ideals of the home as the moral centre of society. Yet Guinevere's final recognition, 'We needs must love the highest when we see it', is presented as her own discovery, and the poem allows her repentance a dignity that complicates its judgment.
Late, late, so late! and dark the night and chill! Late, late, so late! but we can enter still. Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now.
The novice's song, based on the parable of the foolish virgins (Matthew 25), sung unknowingly to the Queen.
It was my duty to have loved the highest: It surely was my profit had I known: It would have been my pleasure had I seen. We needs must love the highest when we see it,
Guinevere's recognition after Arthur has gone: duty, profit and pleasure all point the same way, too late.
Part 13: The Passing of Arthur
The Passing of Arthur
Summary
Bedivere, the first knight made and the last left, tells the story. On the march west to fight Modred, Arthur laments that he has found God in nature but not in the ways of men, and dreams of Gawain's ghost. The last battle is fought in a deathly white mist on the shore of Lyonnesse, where friends kill friends unknowing. When the mist clears, only Arthur and Bedivere are left of the Round Table; Arthur kills Modred and is wounded.
Arthur asks Bedivere to throw Excalibur into the lake. Twice Bedivere hides it, unable to waste so precious a thing; the third time he throws it, and an arm rises from the water, catches it and draws it under. Bedivere carries the king to the shore, where a black barge with three queens takes him away. Arthur speaks his last words, and Bedivere watches the barge vanish into the dawn.
Analysis
The core of this idyll is the 'Morte d'Arthur' of 1842, written in grief for Arthur Hallam, which Tennyson framed in 1869 with new lines at the beginning and end. The opening lament, 'I found Him in the shining of the stars', gives Arthur a crisis of faith close to that of In Memoriam, and the last battle in the mist is a vision of complete confusion, in which no one knows friend from foe (Culler 1977) (Tucker 1988).
Arthur's last speech turns the defeat into part of a larger providence: 'The old order changeth, yielding place to new, / And God fulfils himself in many ways'. The phrase first spoken at his crowning now accepts the end of his own order. Whether Arthur dies or will return is left open, as in Malory, and the poem ends at midwinter with the barge vanishing 'into light' as 'the new sun rose bringing the new year'.
I found Him in the shining of the stars, I marked Him in the flowering of His fields, But in His ways with men I find Him not.
Arthur's lament on the march west: God is visible in nature but not in human history.
The old order changeth, yielding place to new, And God fulfils himself in many ways, Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
Arthur's farewell to Bedivere: even a good order must pass, lest it harden into mere custom.
Part 14: To the Queen
To the Queen
Summary
The epilogue, published in 1873, addresses Queen Victoria and recalls the national thanksgiving for the recovery of the Prince of Wales from typhoid in 1872. Tennyson rejects the suggestion, made in some quarters, that Britain should give up its colonies, and praises the 'ocean-empire' of the loyal.
He asks the Queen to accept 'this old imperfect tale' as an image of 'Sense at war with Soul', with an Arthur who is 'Ideal manhood closed in real man', rather than the king of Welsh legend or of Geoffrey and Malory. He then lists the dangers of the age, from lust for gold and religious doubt to the influence of French art, and hopes that the nation's common sense will save it from the darkness of Arthur's last battle.
Analysis
The epilogue is the clearest statement of the poem's allegorical and national intentions. By connecting the fall of Camelot to the dangers of Victorian Britain, Tennyson presents the Idylls as a warning: a civilisation built on ideals may decay from within. The lines on empire have made the poem central to studies of the Idylls as an imperial and national myth (Sinfield 1986) (Taylor 1983).
The description of Arthur as 'Ideal manhood closed in real man' is the poet's own answer to the critics who found the king bloodless. It also distances Tennyson's Arthur from his sources: the Arthur of Malory is 'Touched by the adulterous finger of a time / That hovered between war and wantonness', whereas Tennyson's is a moral ideal shaped for a modern nation.
Sacred, accept this old imperfect tale, New-old, and shadowing Sense at war with Soul, Ideal manhood closed in real man,
Tennyson's own summary of the poem's meaning and of Arthur's character.
Our ocean-empire with her boundless homes For ever-broadening England,
The imperial context in which the Laureate offered the Idylls to the Queen.
Characters
Arthur's court
- Arthur
- King of Britain, of mysterious birth, who founds the Round Table to bring law and Christian order to a savage land. Tennyson made him blameless, an image of the soul and of 'Ideal manhood closed in real man'. He trusts his wife and knights completely and is the last to see their betrayal. Some readers find him the noble centre of the poem, others a cold and self-righteous prig.
- Guinevere
- Arthur's queen, daughter of Leodogran of Cameliard. Her love for Lancelot is the single sin from which the corruption of the court spreads. She complains that Arthur is too perfect to love, flees to Almesbury when the affair is exposed, and there recognises, too late, that she should have loved 'the highest'. She dies as abbess of the convent.
- Lancelot
- The greatest of Arthur's knights and the Queen's lover, divided between loyalty to his king and passion for his queen. He fetches Guinevere for her wedding, wins tournaments, is loved by Elaine, and sees the Grail only veiled because of his sin. He is the most tragic of the knights, conscious of his guilt but unable to break free.
- Gareth
- Youngest son of Lot and Bellicent and Arthur's nephew, who serves as a kitchen-knave to prove himself and wins honour on Lynette's quest. He is the young idealist of the early idylls, before the court is corrupted.
- Geraint
- Tributary prince of Devon who marries Enid. Infected by the rumours about the Queen, he wrongly suspects his own wife and forces her to ride with him through dangers, until her loyalty convinces him. He dies fighting for Arthur in the north.
- Balin and Balan
- Brothers, the first violent ('the Savage') and the second steady. Balin tries to learn courtesy by following Lancelot's example; his discovery of the Queen's guilt and Vivien's slanders drive him mad, and the brothers kill each other without recognising one another.
- Percivale
- Knight of the Grail quest, now a monk, who narrates 'The Holy Grail'. His sister the nun first sees the Grail. His journey through visions that turn to dust shows the dangers of a quest pursued without humility.
- Galahad
- The pure young knight who sits in the Siege Perilous and achieves the Grail, passing into the spiritual city. He is the one complete success of the quest, and is lost to the world by it.
- Bedivere
- The 'First made and latest left of all the knights', who tells the story of Arthur's passing. He twice fails to throw Excalibur into the lake, and finally watches the barge carry the king away.
- Gawain
- Arthur's nephew, a brilliant but frivolous knight. He abandons the Grail quest and betrays Pelleas by seducing Ettarre. His ghost appears to Arthur before the last battle.
Women
- Enid
- Daughter of the impoverished Earl Yniol and wife of Geraint, the type of the faithful, patient wife. She endures her husband's suspicion and saves him repeatedly. Victorian readers admired her; modern readers often question the poem's praise of her submission.
- Elaine
- The 'lily maid of Astolat', who nurses the wounded Lancelot and dies of love for him. Her body floats on a barge to Camelot with a letter. She is the purest of the women in love and the most helpless.
- Lynette
- The sharp-tongued damsel who comes to court for help and despises the kitchen-knave Gareth until his deeds win her admiration.
Villains and tempters
- Vivien
- Daughter of a man killed fighting Arthur, raised in the corrupt court of King Mark. She slanders the court, seduces the aged Merlin and imprisons him in an oak. She embodies the cynicism that believes no one is pure; feminist critics see in her the poem's fear of female sexuality.
- Modred
- Arthur's nephew, the son of Lot and Bellicent, who spies on the Queen and Lancelot, usurps the throne, and dies at Arthur's hand in the last battle. Tennyson removed the incest by which, in Malory, he is Arthur's son.
- Tristram and Isolt
- Tristram, the brilliant knight and harper, wins the Last Tournament and sings of 'free love'; he is killed by King Mark while visiting Mark's wife Isolt. Their love is an illicit counterpart to that of Lancelot and Guinevere, without its sense of guilt.
Others
- Merlin
- The ancient magician and counsellor who built Camelot and gave Arthur his wisdom, answering questions in riddles. Seduced by Vivien, he is imprisoned for ever in the forest of Broceliande, the defeat of the mind by the senses.
- Dagonet
- Arthur's fool, who mocks the decadent knights at the Last Tournament and calls himself the only true knight left. His grief at the end shows how far the court has fallen.
- Pelleas
- A young idealist knighted to replace those lost on the Grail quest; betrayed by Ettarre and Gawain, he loses his faith in the vows and becomes the Red Knight who mocks the Round Table from his tower in the north.
Themes
The rise and fall of an ideal order
The Idylls tell the history of a civilisation from its foundation to its collapse. Arthur's order of knighthood is an attempt to impose law, faith and self-control on a savage world, and the cycle follows its decay through the seasons, from the May wedding to the winter of the last battle. The cause is not outside attack but inner betrayal: once faith in the vows fails, the realm built on that faith falls apart (Rosenberg 1973).
Tennyson does not present the fall as simply the result of one person's sin. Arthur's own demand for perfection, the madness of the Grail quest and the cynicism of Vivien and Tristram all contribute. The poem is both a tribute to the ideal and an anatomy of why ideals fail when imposed on real men and women.
Sense and Soul
Tennyson described the poem as 'shadowing Sense at war with Soul'. Arthur stands loosely for the soul, the knights for the passions and faculties, and the story shows the soul's attempt to govern the senses and its failure. Several idylls can be read this way: Merlin, the intellect, is overcome by Vivien, sensuality; Balin's savagery cannot be tamed (Tennyson 1897) (Priestley 1973).
But the allegory is not consistent, and Tennyson himself warned against reading it too strictly. The characters are also real people with motives and feelings, and much of the poem's power comes from the tension between their allegorical roles and their human lives.
Marriage, love and adultery
The cycle is built around marriages: Arthur and Guinevere, Geraint and Enid, the courtships of Gareth and Pelleas, Tristram and Isolt. The ideal is the love that is bound by faith, and the central sin is adultery, which betrays both husband and king. Victorian readers saw the poem as a defence of the domestic ideal (Hair 1981).
The women of the poem have been closely studied: Enid the faithful wife, Vivien the seductress, Elaine the pure maiden, Guinevere the adulteress who repents. Modern critics have asked whether the poem blames women for the fall of the realm, or whether it exposes the impossible demands placed on them (Gilbert 1983).
Faith, doubt and vision
The question of Arthur's birth, never answered, makes belief the foundation of the realm. 'The Holy Grail' explores the dangers of spiritual vision pursued at the expense of duty, and 'The Passing of Arthur' begins with the king's own doubt about God's ways with men. The poem reflects the religious crises of Tennyson's time, when science and biblical criticism had shaken traditional faith (Tucker 1988) (Buckley 1960).
Yet the poem does not give up on faith. Arthur's last words affirm that 'God fulfils himself in many ways', and the poem ends with the possibility of his return. Faith is presented as necessary and fragile, a choice to believe in the ideal in spite of all evidence.
Time, change and the seasons
The cycle moves from spring to winter, from the hope of the founding to the darkness of the end. Each idyll is placed in its season, and nature mirrors the state of the realm. This design makes the fall of Camelot seem natural and inevitable, part of the cycle of all human things (Rosenberg 1973).
'The old order changeth, yielding place to new' expresses both loss and hope: the end of one order is the beginning of another. The poem looks back with nostalgia to an ideal past, but it also accepts change as part of the divine plan.
Motifs
Rumour and slander
The rumour of the Queen's love for Lancelot spreads through the realm, infecting Geraint's marriage, driving Balin mad and arming Vivien. Throughout the poem words, true and false, destroy trust faster than swords.
The vows
The oath of Arthur's knights, to reverence the King as their conscience, to right wrongs and to love one woman only, is quoted or recalled in several idylls, from the Dedication to 'Guinevere'. Each broken vow marks a stage in the decline.
Songs within the poem
Rhymed songs interrupt the blank verse at key moments: Enid's song of Fortune, Vivien's song of the rift in the lute, Elaine's song of love and death, Tristram's song of free love, the novice's song of the foolish virgins. Each condenses a theme of its idyll.
The great deep
Arthur comes from the sea and departs over the water, and Merlin's riddle 'From the great deep to the great deep he goes' returns at the end. The sea frames the poem with mystery and suggests that human order is surrounded by the unknown (Ryals 1967).
Symbols
Excalibur
Arthur's sword, given by the Lady of the Lake, is the emblem of his power and divine authority. Its return to the lake at the end, after Bedivere's two failures, marks the end of the order it served.
Camelot
The city 'built to music', which seems to change as one looks at it, represents the ideal realm sustained by belief. It is both real and enchanted, and it fades when faith in it is lost.
The Holy Grail
The cup of the Last Supper is the symbol of spiritual perfection. For a few it is the highest goal; for most it is a 'wandering fire' that draws them from their duty and leaves the Round Table empty.
The barge
Elaine's funeral barge and the black barge that takes Arthur away link love and death and the journey beyond the known world. Both are images of passing from the real into the legendary.
Critical debates
Arthur: ideal or prig?
From the start, readers questioned Tennyson's blameless king. Swinburne in Under the Microscope (1872) called the poem 'Morte d'Albert, or Idylls of the Prince Consort', mocking Arthur as a portrait of Victorian respectability, and other contemporaries, George Meredith among them, found the moral design overbearing. The speech to the prostrate Guinevere has been especially criticised (Swinburne 1872) (Jump 1967).
Defenders argue that Arthur is not a realistic character but the embodiment of an ideal, and that the poem shows both the value and the limits of that ideal. Critics since the 1960s have suggested that Tennyson knew Arthur's perfection was part of the problem: Guinevere's complaint that she could not breathe in 'That pure severity of perfect light' is given real force (Rosenberg 1973) (Ricks 1972).
Allegory or narrative?
Tennyson's comments, reported by Hallam Tennyson, encouraged an allegorical reading: Arthur as the soul, the knights as the passions. Some early critics built elaborate schemes on this basis. Others, including Tennyson himself at times, warned that the poem should not be read as a strict allegory (Tennyson 1897).
Modern critics generally see the Idylls as a mixture, with allegorical suggestion running through realistic narrative. F. E. L. Priestley and J. M. Gray studied the symbolic patterns, while others have stressed the psychological realism of the characters (Priestley 1973) (Gray 1980).
Gender and the women of the Idylls
The first volume of 1859 was built around four women, and the treatment of women has been central to modern criticism. Feminist critics have noted that the fall of the realm is attributed largely to women's sexuality, whether Guinevere's adultery or Vivien's seduction, while Enid and Elaine are praised for submission and self-sacrifice (Gilbert 1983).
Elliot Gilbert's influential essay 'The Female King' argued that the poem registers Victorian anxieties about female power, written as it was under a queen regnant and in a time of changing ideas of gender, and that Arthur himself is a curiously feminised king. Others have pointed out that the poem gives its women complex inner lives, especially Guinevere and Vivien, whose criticism of the court is not simply dismissed (Gilbert 1983) (Sinfield 1986).
Imperial and national myth
The Idylls were written by the Poet Laureate and dedicated to the Prince Consort and the Queen. The epilogue explicitly connects the poem to the empire and to the dangers facing Victorian Britain. Critics have studied how the poem creates a national myth of origins for a modern imperial state (Sinfield 1986).
Arthur's mission to bring order to a savage land has been read as a parallel to the imperial 'civilising mission', and the poem's anxiety about decline as a reflection of fears about the future of the empire. Studies of the Victorian Arthurian revival have placed the Idylls in this context (Taylor 1983).
Faith, science and doubt
The Idylls were written in the decades of Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) and of debates about biblical criticism. Some critics have read the poem as a response to these challenges: the uncertainty of Arthur's birth, the visions of the Grail, Arthur's doubt about God's ways (Buckley 1960) (Tucker 1988).
Herbert Tucker and others have argued that the poem's darkening vision expresses a deep pessimism about the possibility of faith in the modern world, while others have stressed its final affirmation of providence.
The unity of the twelve-part design
Because the idylls were written and published over more than forty years, and not in their final order, early critics often treated them as a series of separate poems. Modern critics, especially Rosenberg and Ryals, have argued for the unity of the design: the seasonal cycle, the recurrence of motifs and the steady progress of decay (Rosenberg 1973) (Ryals 1967).
Others have stressed the differences of tone and style between idylls written at different times, and the awkwardness with which the earlier poems were fitted into the later design. The debate turns on whether the Idylls should be read as an epic or as a collection (Kincaid 1975) (Pattison 1979).
Tennyson's medievalism compared
The Idylls belong to a wide Victorian revival of the Middle Ages. William Morris in The Defence of Guenevere (1858) and Swinburne in Tristram of Lyonesse (1882) treated Arthurian themes very differently, emphasising passion and sensuality rather than moral order (Taylor 1983).
Critics have compared Tennyson's moralised Camelot with these versions, and with the Pre-Raphaelite paintings that illustrated his poems. Tennyson's medievalism is less interested in historical accuracy than in using the past as a mirror for the present (Staines 1982) (Eggers 1971).
Key passages
The old order changeth, yielding place to new, And God fulfils himself in many ways, Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
Arthur's last words of consolation turn the fall of the Round Table into part of a providential pattern. Even a good order must give way, because a custom that lasts too long becomes empty. The line first spoken at his crowning now accepts his own end.
New-old, and shadowing Sense at war with Soul, Ideal manhood closed in real man,
The poet's own summary of his poem: an old story made new, an allegory of the conflict of the senses and the spirit, and an Arthur who is both ideal and human.
From the great deep to the great deep he goes.
Merlin's riddle about Arthur's birth becomes a refrain for the mystery of his end. Arthur comes from the unknown and returns to it; what lies between is a brief attempt at order.
Live pure, speak true, right wrong, follow the King—
The ideal of Arthur's knighthood in a single line, spoken by a youth at the beginning of the cycle. The rest of the poem tests whether anyone can live by it.
It is the little rift within the lute, That by and by will make the music mute,
A small flaw grows until it destroys the whole harmony. The song describes love, but it also describes the way the Queen's sin spreads through the realm.
His honour rooted in dishonour stood, And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.
Lancelot's divided loyalty is expressed in paradox: his fidelity to the Queen is betrayal of the King, and his honour grows from dishonour.
Arthur, my lord, Arthur, the faultless King, That passionate perfection, my good lord— But who can gaze upon the Sun in heaven?
Guinevere's scornful praise of her husband: his perfection is too bright to love. Her words have given many readers their view of Arthur as cold and remote.
We needs must love the highest when we see it, Not Lancelot, nor another.
After Arthur's departure Guinevere recognises that she should have loved him. The line has been read both as genuine repentance and as the poem's imposition of its ideal on her.
I found Him in the shining of the stars, I marked Him in the flowering of His fields, But in His ways with men I find Him not.
Arthur's lament before the last battle expresses a Victorian crisis of faith: God is visible in nature but not in human history. The lines link the Idylls to In Memoriam.
I am thy fool, And I shall never make thee smile again.
The fool's last words show the end of laughter and of the court. Even the jester, who saw through the pretences of the knights, is overcome by grief for the king.
Questions for study
Why does Tennyson never settle the question of Arthur's birth?
Consider the conflicting accounts in 'The Coming of Arthur', Merlin's riddle, and the role of belief in sustaining the realm.
Is Arthur a convincing character or only an ideal?
Compare 'Ideal manhood closed in real man' with his speech to Guinevere and Guinevere's complaint in 'Lancelot and Elaine'.
How does the rumour of the Queen's adultery affect characters who are not directly involved?
Look at Geraint, Balin, Pelleas and the knights of the Last Tournament.
Compare Enid, Elaine, Vivien and Guinevere. What ideals of womanhood does the poem present, and does it question them?
Think about the 1859 volume and modern feminist readings.
What does the Grail quest reveal about the relation between spiritual vision and practical duty?
Consider Arthur's warning about 'wandering fires', the different fates of the knights, and his closing speech.
How does the seasonal cycle shape the meaning of the poem?
Trace the movement from the May wedding to the autumn of the Last Tournament and the winter of the last battle.
What is the function of the songs set into the blank verse?
Look at Enid's, Vivien's, Tristram's and the novice's songs.
How do the Dedication and 'To the Queen' affect the way we read the Idylls?
Think about Prince Albert, the empire and the warnings about Victorian society.
Does the poem end in despair or hope?
Consider Arthur's last words, the ambiguity of his passing, and the image of the new sun.
How does Tennyson change his sources, especially Malory?
Think about the removal of the incest, the blameless Arthur, and the emphasis on the Queen's sin.
Further reading
- Buckley, Jerome Hamilton. Tennyson: The Growth of a Poet. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960.
- Culler, A. Dwight. The Poetry of Tennyson. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977.
- Eggers, J. Philip. King Arthur's Laureate: A Study of Tennyson's Idylls of the King. New York: New York University Press, 1971.
- Gilbert, Elliot L. 'The Female King: Tennyson's Arthurian Apocalypse.' PMLA 98.5 (1983): 863–78.
- Gray, J. M. Thro' the Vision of the Night: A Study of Source, Evolution and Structure in Tennyson's Idylls of the King. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1980.
- Gray, J. M., ed. Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Idylls of the King. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983.
- Hair, Donald S. Domestic and Heroic in Tennyson's Poetry. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981.
- Jump, John D., ed. Tennyson: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967.
- Kincaid, James R. Tennyson's Major Poems: The Comic and Ironic Patterns. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975.
- Martin, Robert Bernard. Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart. Oxford: Clarendon Press; London: Faber and Faber, 1980.
- Pattison, Robert. Tennyson and Tradition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979.
- Priestley, F. E. L. Language and Structure in Tennyson's Poetry. London: André Deutsch, 1973.
- Ricks, Christopher. Tennyson. London: Macmillan, 1972.
- Ricks, Christopher, ed. The Poems of Tennyson. London: Longman, 1969; 2nd ed., 3 vols. Harlow: Longman, 1987.
- Rosenberg, John D. The Fall of Camelot: A Study of Tennyson's Idylls of the King. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1973.
- Ryals, Clyde de L. From the Great Deep: Essays on Idylls of the King. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1967.
- Shaw, W. David. Tennyson's Style. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976.
- Sinfield, Alan. Alfred Tennyson. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986.
- Staines, David. Tennyson's Camelot: The Idylls of the King and Its Medieval Sources. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1982.
- Swinburne, Algernon Charles. Under the Microscope. London: D. White, 1872.
- Taylor, Beverly, and Elisabeth Brewer. The Return of King Arthur: British and American Arthurian Literature since 1800. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1983.
- Tennyson, Hallam. Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir by His Son. 2 vols. London: Macmillan, 1897.
- Tucker, Herbert F. Tennyson and the Doom of Romanticism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988.
Written by the Poetry Codex editors. Updated 2026-10-19.