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Tennyson's "Idylls" : a Critical Study

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Tennyson's TENNYSON'S IDYLLS : A CRITICAL STUDY Thesis presented for the degree of Master of Arts at the University of Cape Town by H. S . HOUGHTON-HAWKSLEY University of Cape Town Supervisor: Mr B • .S . LEE DECE1'1BER 1979 The lJriv 'rr;i•, rt C me Town ha s ~ . I ueen g ·en t: · ' •' ' " i t'1esis I 1 whole in ,. r ' , it I, ' bv th author. The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgement of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes only. Published by the University of Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. University of Cape Town ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the following per s ons for the ir assistanc e and encouragement: - Mr B. So Lee who supe rvised the prep ar ation of this thesis ; My family for their patienc e ; but particularly my wife for her devoted support. CONTENTS Page PREFACE O O O • O O O e O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 0 (i) I NTRODUCTION THE ARTHURI AN LEGEND 1 CHAPTER ONE TENNYSON ' S USE OF HIS MAJOR SOURCES ••.•••••..•.•••• o • • • • • • • 16 CHAPTER TWO CYC LICAL IMAGERY 76 CHAPTER THREE STRUC TURE 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 120 CHAPTER FOUR THEME 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 O O O O O O O O O O O O O 0 174 CONCLUS I ON 0 0 0 0 0 0 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O o o o O O O O O O O o O O O 0 229 NOTES • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 0 • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 241 BIBLIOGRAPHY . 275 NOTE ON REFERENCES TO THE TEXT OF THE 'IDYLLS OF THE KING' Poetry citations are to line number unless otherwise specified. Citations from the Idylls of the King are given in parenthe~es immediately after the quotation and ar e abbreviated as follows: 'The Coming of Arthur' CA 'Gar eth and Lynette' GL 'The Marriage of Geraint' MG 'Geraint and Enid' GE 'Balin and Balan' BB ' Me rlin and Vivien' MV 'Lancelot and Elaine' LE 'The Holy Grail' HG 'Felleas and Ettarre' PE ' The Last Tournament' LT 'Guinevere ' G 'The Passing of Arthur' PA PREFACE This critical study of the Idylls of the King is an attempt to demonstrate that Tennyson ' s treatment of the Arthurian theme, while being a new but valid development of a particu­ l ar literary tradition, also resulted in a poem of consider­ able literary merit. Critical opinion of the poem has fluctuated considerably since the Idylls of the King was first published in 1859. Critics in the period from 1859 to the end of the 19th Century were almost invariably fulsome in their praise, the typical comments of Gladstone, Bagehot, Cheetham, Oliphant , Alford, Littledale, Maccallum and others r anging from Alford' s ' • •• a great connected poem, dealing with the very highest interests of man ' to Gladstone's ' •• . its author • . has made a sensible addition to the permanent wealth of mankind . 11 Inevitably, reaction set in and, in the first three decades of the 20th Century most critics were damning in their dis­ approval of what Carlyle h ad termed Tennyson's 'superlative lollipops ' , Eliot further declaring that ' •.• for narrative Tennyson had uo gift at all. 12 As early as 1916 Bradley stated that 'the nadir of his ~ennyson's] f ame may not quite A be reached, but it can hardly be far off . '/ Then in 1921 Boas commented that the Idylls was not ' an organic whole 14 and, in 1923, Fausset repeated this criticism, adding that ii Tennyson's 'morality overwhelmingly depressed the plot' •5 Nicolson established a new trend in 1925 when he praised certain aspects of the poetry of the Idllls but then condemned the series as a whole: 'In spite of the magnificent poetry which the Idylls contain .•• these poems of the Farringford period are for the most part intellectually insincere' •6 Much later, in 1963, Baum also lauds the 'brilliant passages' but then declares the total work to be ' ••• utterly wanting in unity, and coherence of structure ••• and meaning'.7 But Priestley, in my opinion, brought some sense of balance to criticism of the Idylls with his article in the 'University of Toronto ~uarterly' in 1949. There he gave his assessment of the Idylls of the King , stating that the 'real deficiency grows out of their piecemeal composition' but, nevertheless, stressing that 'the total dramatic effect seems ••. to have considerable power '. His assessment is at variance with Nicolson's charge of insincerity as he affirms that the Idylls 'represent one of Tennyson' s most earnest and important efforts to deal with major problems of his time'~ and, in 1960, concludes that the poem 'is surely the finest symbol of what r~ennyson himself built , his poetic city'~ Other modern critics: Engbretsen, Buc kley, Wilson , Ryals , Gray, Rosenber g and others , are unanimous in their assessment of the Idylls as a work of high literary value. 10 This tendency in literary criticism of the Idyll~ caused Palmer to observe that 'no work of Tennyson's has been so strikingly revalued 1 1 during recent years as the Idxlls ~ iii Although the corpus of ~ennysonian criticism is a large one, no unified critical study has previously been made - to my knowledge - of t he Idylls of the r ing both as an original interpretation of the Arthurian legend and as a work of art, paying particular attention to its imagery, structure and theme. The time seems to me to be appropriate for re-assessing the Idylls now that the pendulum of critical opinion has swung to both extremes since the poet's death. In order to place the Idylls in their historical perspective I have, in the Introduction, given a resume of Arthurian literary tradition up to the time of Malory, paying particular attention to the works referred to as sources (by either Tennyson himself or by Hallam Tennyson), and/or to those which had clearly influenced Malory. As ~ennyson's acknowledged main source, the Norte Darthur is the well­ defined overlap between the legend and the Idylls of the Kipg. Chapter One first traces Tennys on's great debt to Malory and, paradoxically, his lack of dependence on him. Such comparison has generally been neglected by critics who, in the main, are satisfied to quote the relevant chapter from Malory as his source, but seldom compare the divergent aims of the two authors before assessing the literary worth of the parallel extracts. In this regard C.S.Lewis s ays that 'the first qualification for judging any piece of workmanship from a corkscrew to a cathedral is to know what it is -- what it is intended to do and how it is meant to be used' . 12 Wqile not attempting to anticipate the fuller critical analysis of the poem which follows in the remAinin~ chapters of the thesis, iv this chapter demonstrates that Tennyson's purposes in composing the Idyll~ were very different to Malory 's (in writing the Morte Darthur). In the second place , this chapter compares the Geraint idylls with the Mabiqogion story of ' Geraint Son of Erbin' in order to show what use Tennyson made of this source. Then, finally, the evolution of Tennyson ' s purposes prior to the composition of the 1859 Idyll~ will be shown through a discussion of his Arthurian poems which are not incorporated in the Idylls, and of the unpublished prose drafts of Arthurian themes. Some of these prose drafts are of Arthurian projects not followed up by the poet, others are drafts for individual idylls which form part of the Idylls of the Kin_g. 1rhen follows a detailed study of the Imagery , Structure and Theme(s) of the Idylls. In Chapter Two particular attention is paid to Tennyson ' s use of cyclic i magery, particularly as it relates to the seasons, colour, animals , music, names and water . The cyclicality of treatment of imagery progresses naturally to the cyclicality of structural design which i s discussed in Chapter Three. I have concentrated on cyclic imagery for two reasons. The first is that critics of the Idylls have, almost without exception, praised Tennyson's technical mastery of language symbolism, i.e. imagery, thus making further general discussion relatively superfluous. Secondly, it is only in the last two decades that the some scholars, e.g. Buckley, Engelberg , Rosenberg and Gray, have appreciated the contribution made by what may be termed cyclical or serial imagery, 13 and it is my contention that it is the cohesive cyclical unity of imagery, structure and V theme which must form the framework for a valid re-assessment of the Idylls of th~ King. Chapter Three considers first the chronological development . ; of the poem in order to point out why Tennyson ultimately recast the series in a non-chronological arrangement. I put forward a theory in connection with the cyclical ordering of matching pairs of individual idylls which I think affords definitive evidence of the deep structural design of the poem. This theory treats pairs of idylls which display a similar structural design and have the same or almost the same date of compos ition.
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