The Cycling and Recycling of the Arthurian Myth in Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King A thesis presented to the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts Alison L. Walker June 2010 © 2010 Alison L. Walker. All Rights Reserved. 2 This thesis titled The Cycling and Recycling of the Arthurian Myth in Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King by ALISON L. WALKER has been approved for the Department of English and the College of Arts and Sciences by Marsha L. Dutton Professor of English Benjamin M. Ogles Dean, College of Arts and Sciences 3 ABSTRACT WALKER, ALISON L., M.A., June 2010, English The Cycling and Recycling of the Arthurian Myth in Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King (99 pp.) Director of Thesis: Marsha L. Dutton The Arthurian myth is a complex system of tales, each of which focuses on some aspect of the legendary King Arthur, his Knights of the Round Table, or the royal court at Camelot. The power of the myth is that it is mutable, recyclable, and recursive. The purpose of this thesis is to examine and evaluates these elements of the myth and how they have evolved from the medieval era to the Victorian era. The inquiry will focus primarily on Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King and the ways in which he implemented recursive circles and cycles stylistically, structurally, and narratively throughout his individual idylls and the complete poem to wholly express the self-reflexive, appropriative, and contemporary natures of the Arthurian myth. Finally, the investigation moves toward Tennyson’s contributions to the myth and the ways authors continued to experiment artistically with the myth into the twenty-first century. Approved: _____________________________________________________________ Marsha L. Dutton Professor of English 4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, thank you to my mentors Marsha Dutton, Matthew VanWinkle, and Janis Holm for all of the aid, constructive feedback, and support they provided me with during my research and writing processes. Though I was familiar with the Arthurian myth before Dr. Dutton’s Medieval Literature class, her instruction was what sparked my interest in the subject and inspired me to look more deeply into the myth. I would also like to extend my appreciation to my fellow classmates, because it was their insightful contributions and astute insights into the myth that helped me generate the beginnings of the ideas that most shaped this essay. Much gratitude to my mother, the woman who takes time out of her busy life to proofread my every paper; I do not believe there is an essay I have written that she has not made better, including this thesis. To my father, I appreciate the regular check-in calls made via cell-phone text, call, or voice message to ensure I was “sleeping and eating regularly,” generally “taking care of myself,” and “still making time for fun.” My appreciation to my Ellis 08 fellowship and my sisters (especially the one who provided me with endless caffeinated beverages) for helping me maintain my sanity during times of stress through their uncanny abilities to entertain, distract, and support me when I needed it most. And a special thanks to Erin Wagner, my thesis-writing-partner-in-crime, who spent countless nights into early mornings in the computer lab both encouraging and challenging me to continue forward. Finally, I would like to thank my best friend in Seattle who, both to my benefit and annoyance, never stops reminding me “to breathe” and that "I can do it." My immeasurable thanks to you all. 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract ............................................................................................................................... 3  Acknowledgments ................................................................................................................ 4  Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 6  The Arthurian Myth ............................................................................................................. 8  The Historical to the Legendary Arthur ........................................................................... 9  Legendary to Mythological Arthur ................................................................................. 16  The Death and Rebirth of the Arthurian Myth ................................................................... 18  Synopsis of the Arthurian Myth ......................................................................................... 24  Tennyson’s Arthurian Work: Idylls of The King ..................................................................... 30  Tennyson and the Function of Social Literature ................................................................. 39  Tennyson’s Career and Turn Toward Social Literature ................................................... 39  Views on Social Literature and the Ideal ......................................................................... 41  The Arthurian Myth as Recursive, Appropriative, and Contemporary ................................ 49  Temporal Cycles: Birth, Death, and Rebirth ....................................................................... 61  Seasonal and Diurnal Cycles ........................................................................................... 62  Maturational Cycles ........................................................................................................ 68  Temporal Cycles Moving Together as One .................................................................... 75  There Are No True Endings .......................................................................................... 79  Tennyson’s Contributions to the Arthurian Myth ............................................................... 82  Twain: Recycling and Reversing Cycles .......................................................................... 83  Eliot: Allusion and Borrowing ........................................................................................ 87  T. H. White: Reinvention and Maturation ...................................................................... 91  Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 95  Works Cited ....................................................................................................................... 96  Primary Sources ............................................................................................................. 96  Secondary Sources ......................................................................................................... 96 6 INTRODUCTION The Arthurian myth is a complex system of tales, each of which focuses on some aspect of the legendary King Arthur, his Knights of the Round Table, or the royal court at Camelot. Over the course of its history, writers have written countless renditions of the myth, but why? What is it exactly about the Arthurian myth that makes it such appealing subject matter for authors? Though a similar thread runs through these tales, each author treats his or her telling or retelling of the myth individualistically. The attraction of the Arthurian myth is its mutability. From the myth’s beginning, authors have appropriated it to suit their goals and purposes. In the medieval era, when England was in need of a great leader, stories of Arthur appeared. Arthur, or Aurelius Ambrosius as early authors referred to him, was an individual of honorable birth who successfully united the English people under one ruler and one religion and against foreign invaders. Whether or not this Arthur ever existed or was a real historical figure eventually became irrelevant. Eventually, the figure of Arthur, his Round Table, and his Camelot were not as important to the myth as the ways in which each author appropriated them to a particular place, situation, or time. Inga Bryden points out in Reinventing King Arthur, “the remodeled Arthurs were more culturally revealing than the question of whether an original or authentic King Arthur actually existed” (31). Geoffrey of Monmouth created an Arthur and an Arthurian legend that were representative of twelfth-century medieval England, just as the anonymous author of the alliterative Morte Arthure did for fourteenth-century Plantagenet England, just as Tennyson did for nineteenth-century Victorian England, and as T. H. White did for twentieth century, World War II England. Eventually, the figure of Arthur, his Round Table, and his Camelot were not as important to the myth as the ways in which each author 7 appropriated them to a particular place, situation, or time. The Arthurian myth, like Camelot, was and still is always in the process of being built (Bryden 143). During the seventeenth century, the Arthurian myth fell out of favor with authors, prompting a number of later writers to question why. Were the king and his court culturally, socially, and politically irrelevant? While asking these questions of relevance, authors looked at the myth retrospectively and explicitly noticed the ways in which each work, tale, or narrative functioned with the whole of the myth. By paying such close attention to the form of the myth and the structure of the legends within it, nineteenth-century authors began detecting patterns. As they looked closer at the structure of the myth, it appeared to take on a circular form and to be cyclical in nature. Certain elements of the myth were particularly recyclable and reinterpretable, and as Bryden points out, these elements are what authors manipulated and recreated to mold a work that was meaningful for them and their audiences: “By the last decades of the nineteenth century, Victorian Arthurians were acutely aware of their contribution to the manufacturing of Arthurian myth,” and to the self-reflective nature of the Arthurian myth and how the epic’s process of composition enacts the process of myth making (Bryden 31). Nineteenth-century Victorian poet Alfred Lord Tennyson was keenly aware of and intrigued by the many functions of the Arthurian myth and incorporated them stylistically, structurally, and narratively into his Arthurian poem Idylls of the King. Though most Arthurian legends were reflections of the times and places within which they were written, few authors openly acknowledged them as being so. In his poem, Tennyson created a relevant form that not only applied to his own time, but also showed precisely how the Arthurian myth adapts from one age to the next, a concept many of his contemporaries were familiar with but with 8 which none had artistically experimented. Furthermore, Tennyson not only illustrated how the myth was adaptable from one age to the next, but how it was adaptable within one age and could be used didactically. His Idylls perfectly depict the power of the myth to be always contemporary. Tennyson consciously structured his Idylls of the King to resemble the structure of the Arthurian myth as a whole. Bryden mentions at the end of her interpretation of the myth that twenty-first-century critical interpretation of the Idylls have begun focusing more on the epic’s process of composition and the way it enacts the process of myth-making (143). Few, however, have looked deeply enough at the idylls as they function both independently and dependently to explore just how Tennyson managed to depict the structure of the Arthurian myth within the structure of his poem. Tennyson used recursive circles and cycles stylistically, structurally, and narratively throughout his work to express and illustrate the self- reflexive, contemporary, and eternal nature of the Arthurian myth. THE ARTHURIAN MYTH As Beverly Taylor notes in her study of myth, myth and legend are difficult media in which to find comfort; the historical and the literary aspects of myth remain independent and dependent in a way that tempts readers and critics to treat them as separate entities. In actuality, the two are independent entities. One myth may find its roots in history and another in literature, but frequently—especially as a myth continues to develop over time and space—it moves into and out of historical and literary spaces, effectively blurring the line between the two, eventually becoming indistinguishable; such is the case with Arthurian myth. The first Arthurian legends claim to have roots in history, but by the early twelfth century, they progressed from the historical sphere into the literary or legendary. During the 9 twelfth century, and more definitively by the nineteenth, Taylor says, “the visionary kingdom of Arthur hovered behind the real kingdom of his supposed successors who wore the English Crown” (1). Tennyson dedicated his Arthurian poem to Prince Albert, Consort of Queen Victoria, whom he believed most perfectly embodied the ideals of King Arthur; for Tennyson, Albert was not a successor of King Arthur, but was the famous and righteous king incarnate, or at least as depicted in his Idylls of the King. The Historical to the Legendary Arthur As Geoffrey Ashe notes in his mid-twentieth century study of Arthurian legendry, whether or not a real King Arthur existed is not of importance, especially when evaluating the use of the myth in the Victorian era. Ashe labels Arthur “protean” or a “shape-shifter who has taken different forms over the course of the centuries” (Bloom 135). In The Romance of Arthur, James Wilhelm makes clear in his exploration into the Arthurian myth the many ways in which Arthur, his kingdom, and his warriors and/or knights changed from the fourth through the fifteenth centuries. Though the Arthur of the fifteenth century seems to have developed from the Arthur of the fourth century, the form that he takes in these narratives has changed. Frequently these changes were due to social, national, or cultural shifts. The authors of the Arthurian tales molded their Arthur to fit the environment within which they wrote him. The earliest Arthurian tales treat Arthur as a historical figure. Scholars credit the fifth-century writer Gildas with the first documented appearance of Arthur in writing.1 Gildas’s Ambrosius Aurelianus is never actually called Arthur, though most literary 1 The Welsh text Y Gododdin mentions an Arthurian esque leader, and though scholars believe that Y Gododdin predates Gildas’s text, there is currently no consensus on the precise date at which this text was written or who the author is; Thomas Charles-Edwards argues that the author is Aneirin, a writer who lived in the sixth century (66). 10 historians believe the two individuals to be one and the same; in the section “The Victory at Badon Hill” from De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, Ambrosius saves the seemingly defeated Britons from the Saxon invaders: After a time, when the cruel plunderers had gone home, God gave strength to the survivors. Wretched people fled to them from all directions . . . that they should not be altogether destroyed. Their leader was Ambrosius Aurelianus, a gentleman who, perhaps alone of the Romans, had survived the shock of this notable storm . . . .Under him our people regained their strength, and challenged the victors to battle. The Lord assented, and the battle went their way. (Gildas 28) As Frank Reno points out in his research into the historical Arthur, Ambrosius Aurelianus was an authentic figure in Roman history, an emperor who ruled between 270 and 275 CE; history documents him traveling to Britain during his reign (Reno 263). Reno believes that Ambrosius Aurelianus was a great leader and warrior who escorted the Britons into battle against their enemy invaders, the Saxons, and continued to rule over Britain for the next forty-four years. The next author to mention Ambrosius Aurelianus was Bede in his eighth-century Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum. His description closely follows that of his predecessor, Gildas. The first chronicler to give the name Arthur to Britain’s great leader and war hero was Nennius in his ninth-century work Historia Brittonum. Nennius placed his Arthur firmly within the geographical regions of Britain, defined him as Christian, and elevated him in stature, equating him with the “kings of the Britons” (Wilhelm 5). The last writer to depict Arthur as a historical figure was William of Malmesbury in his twelfth-century De rebus gestis