Tennyson's Camelot: The Idylls of the King and Its Medieval Sources

Robert Seiler was Assistant Professor of General Studies at the University of Calgary.

Hardly a year goes by without the appearance of at least one book claiming to make a good case for rehabilitating The Idylls of the King, Tennyson’s version of the legends of King Arthur and the Round Table. Invariably, the author presents as his argument a variation of the claim that Christopher Ricks makes in his headnote to the Longmans edition (1969) of the Idylls — namely, that Tennyson “made the old legends his own, restored the idealism, and infused into them a spirit of modern thought and ethical significance, setting his characters in a rich and varied landscape” (p. 1460). Tennyson’s Camelot is no exception, and no less a celebrity than the poet’s grandson and biographer, the late Sir Charles Tennyson, has contributed a Foreword endorsing the study.

It has become de rigueur to defend Tennyson against matthew Arnold’s charge (made in 1860) that he is “deficient in intellectual power” and against T.S. Eliot’s charge (made in 1936) that he had no gift for narrative. David Staines bases his argument on a detailed study of the poet’s evolving conception of the Idylls and his treatment of his sources, which include Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Britons, Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur and Lady Charlotte Guest’s translation of the Mabinogion, and an analysis of the allegory, especially the tragedy that ensues when mankind fails “to love the highest when we see it.” Staines covers a lot of ground; inevitably, much of it is familiar. He has some interesting things to say in the opening chapters, though. In chapter one he shows the poet, in poems like “The Lady of Shalott” (1832) and “Morte d’Arthur” (1842), experimenting with his sources, looking for “a proper avenue” into the legends and an appropriate structure for their re-creation. In chapter two he shows Tennyson realizing that Guinevere gives unity and coherence to his Arthurian world. In chapters three, four, and five Staines studies the composition of the Idylls that appeared in 1869, 1871, 1872, and 1885, respectively. The picture that emerges is that of the poet developing a number of techniques, including following the original plot freely, condensing the story for dramatic effect, expanding the dialogue, incorporating details from other sources, and vivifying the external setting (p. 38), so that he could re-create Camelot and express his vision of “Sense at War with Soul.” In the Epilogue, Staines surveys the effect the Idylls had on the poets and painters of the age, and in the four appendices he reprints material calculated to increase the reader’s admiration for Tennyson’s adaptation of the legends and to help him understand the poem’s “parabolic” meaning.

The student of Tennyson will find this study, which began life as a Harvard Ph.D. dissertation (1973), fascinating and irritating: fascinating because it makes a useful contribution to our understanding of the poem that occupied Tennyson’s imagination for nearly fifty years, and irritating because the text is difficult to read. Staines has a habit of stringing quotations together, repeating himself, and shifting from the active voice to the passive voice.