For centuries, accounts of King Arthur and his court have fascinated historians, scholars, poets, and readers. Each age has added material to reflect its own cultural attitudes, but no era has supplemented the earlier versions more than the poets of the Medieval Revival of nineteenth-century England. This book examines how Arthurian legend was read and rewritten during that period by four enduring writers: Alfred Lord Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, William Morris, and Algernon Charles Swinburne. While other works have looked at Arthurian legend in light of nineteenth-century social conditions, this volume focuses on how these poets approached love and death in their works, and how the legend of Arthur shaped their vision. An introductory chapter traces Arthurian legend from its inception. The chapters that follow are each devoted to a particular author's use of Arthurian material in an exploration of love and death. For Tennyson, love leads to trust, and when trust is shattered, death soon follows. Arnold, on the other hand, advocates moderation, so that the loss of a loved one produces neither debilitating agony nor only a mild melancholy. Morris concentrates on the differences between physical and spiritual love, while Swinburne presents a world tormented by love and in which death is the only release.

As the principal narrative poem of nineteenth-century England, Tennyson's Idylls of the King is an ambitious and widely influential reworking of the Arthurian legends of the Middle Ages, which have provided a great body of myth and symbol to writers, painters, and composers for the past hundred years. Tennyson's treatment of these legends is now valued as a deeply significant oblique commentary on cultural decadence and the precarious balance of civilization. Drawing upon published and unpublished materials, Tennyson's Camelot studies the Idylls of the King from the perspective of all its medieval sources. In noting the Arthurian literature Tennyson knew and paying special attention to the works that became central to his Arthurian creation, the volume reveals the poet's immense knowledge of the medieval legends and his varied approaches to his sources. The author follows the chronology of composition of the Idylls, allowing the reader to see Tennyson's evolving conception of his poem and his changing attitudes to the medieval accounts. The Idylls of the King stands, ultimately, as the poet's own Camelot, his legacy to his generation, an indictment of his society through a vindication of his idealism.

Roger Simpson 's] finds are crisp, detailed, and convincing.' MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW The revival of interest in Arthurian literature in the early part of the 19th century has been largely unremarked until now. Roger Simpson's wide-ranging study of this period, in which he traces the dominant forms adopted by the Arthurian revival and presents a wealth of new material, shows it to have been of critical importance in the development of the legend and to have been a powerful early influence on Tennyson, whose role within the Arthurian revival is accordingly reassessed. His book also contains a complete bibliography of early 19th-century Arthurian poetry, drama and prose fiction, together with catalogues of paintings and illustrated books. ROGER SIMPSON is Director, Centre for Overseas Student Programmes, at the University of East Anglia

Geïllustreerde studie over de herleving van de codes van het middeleeuwse ridderschap van het einde van de 18e eeuw tot de eerste wereldoorlog.

This book examines French Romantic medievalism through one of its many manifestations, the treatment of the Arthurian legends. Examining works of historiography and literary history, as well as literary texts proper, it assesses the place of the Arthurian material in French culture in the period up to 1860, the date of publication of Edgar Quinet's Merlin l'enchanteur. In so doing, it reveals key features of French Romanticism and traces the origins of some of the problems and contradictions which still affect the practice of medieval studies, the study of medieval literature, and the representation of the Middle Ages. The author argues that the depiction of Arthurian legends in French Romantic writing discloses some of the underlying ideological positions of the movement, such as the division between liberal and royalist views of the Middle Ages and the construction of a French national identity. He also explores the developing tensions between the interests of a general literary public and the ambitions of scholars seeking to define and promote medieval literature as an emerging field of study. In addition to scholars such as Claude Fauriel, Paulin Paris and Francisque Michel, other important figures in French Romanticism are considered, including Edgar Quinet and Michelet.

An account in words and pictures of how the world of Camelot and King Arthur's knights was reflected in, and shaped by, book illustration.

The allusion of Camelot came long after the scriptural pictures of heaven. But human vision has always idealized what began in the story of the Garden of Eden. Camelot produces gardens in our minds, though it is far broader than a simple garden. It represents that vision of perfection or more demonstrably utopia with justice and mercy and others. Visioning everything to be precise is a possibility that the human mind freely involves itself. There is no attempt to see Camelot allegorically in this book. But we all have the vision of the knights of the round table and their desires to make the kingdom successful. Yet Lancelot also plays a kind of role that is not uncommon to the human condition.