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'The Old Order Changeth': Arthurian Literary Production from Tennyson to White

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'The Old Order Changeth': Arthurian Literary Production from Tennyson to White ‘The Old Order Changeth’: Arthurian literary production from Tennyson to White Rob Gossedge PhD Thesis Cardiff University September, 2007 UMI Number: U585003 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U585003 Published by ProQuest LLC 2013. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 PG/R/06/10 CARDIFF UNIVERSITY PRIFYSGOL Cae RDY[§) Student ID Number: 991321740 Summary of Thesis: This is a study of modern retellings of the Arthurian story, from Tennyson’s Idylls of the King (1842-1891) to T.H. White’s The Once and Future King (1938-1958). It has three main aims. First, while primarily a literary history, it attempts to form an integrated narrative of the modern Arthurian legend through the study of creative literature, scholarship, historiography, visual art, journalism and popular culture. Second, unlike earlier Anglo-American accounts of modern Arthuriana, this thesis concentrates exclusively on British literature, including previously-ignored retellings of the legend by Scottish, Irish, Welsh and Cornish writers and emphasises the influence of Celtic writing on contemporary English literature. Third, this thesis attempts to demonstrate how post-Tennysonian English literature is fundamentally different from earlier manifestations of the legend. The medieval and Victorian traditions, this study argues, were characterised by a series of literary revolutions, beginning with the creation of a paradigmatic text (Geoffrey’s Historia, Malory’s Morte Darthur, Tennyson’s Idylls), which served the ideological needs of elite social groups. After the creation of such texts there followed lengthy periods of stable literary production which essentially reproduced and expanded the ideological franchise of the paradigm. Yet at certain points, due to major social and economic transition, the Arthurian paradigm no longer functioned effectively in its paradigmatic mould and underwent a period of crisis - only to emerge in a new paradigmatic formation. Yet the modern, post-Tennysonian tradition has not conformed to this hegemonic structure. In the absence of a paradigm, Arthurian literature since the 1920s has been characterised by a series of diverse and contradictory trends. Some of these have been nationalist in orientation, while others have developed directly out of scholarly approaches. Politically, they have been informed by a range of ideologies, from conservatism to feminism and from anarchism to clerical fascism. This thesis examines the causes of the breakdown of the paradigmatic structure in twentieth-century Arthurian literature, while chronicling the significance of the trends that developed in its place - shaping the Arthurian story into a much more British political narrative. Yet with the current breakdown in the conception of Britain as a political unit, the Arthurian story seems ready for another major shift in form and significance. Acknowledgements First I would like to thank Stephen Knight for tireless supervision and constant critical engagement over the three years in which this thesis was written. His comments and suggestions over various stages of the project have greatly benefited this work. For financial support I am grateful for a scholarship from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, as well as for several small grants from the School of English, Communication and Philosophy at Cardiff University. Also to be thanked is Martin Coyle for his considerable assistance when preparing the initial research proposal. I am also grateful to many others who have been generous in providing information and assistance: Nicola Bassett, Anna Birt, Roger Dalrymple, Faye Hammill, Dawn Harrington, Haley Miles, Carl Phelpstead, Helen Phillips and Heather Worthington. Special thanks ought to be made to Katie Gramich who kindly provided me with several translations from the Cymraeg and was of great help in the preparation of chapter four. Finally, I would like to acknowledge my debt to Nicola Lloyd for patience and proofreading. ii Contents Declarations Summary of Thesis Acknowledgements i Contents ii List of Illustrations iv Note vi Introduction 1 The structure of Arthurian literary production in Medieval Britain 11 Chapter One From ‘chaff and draff to National Epic: Tennyson’s Idylls o f 26 the King and nineteenth-century Arthuriana Modem Arthurian literature before Tennyson 29 Tennyson’s early Arthurian poems: domesticating the legend 33 The Idylls o f the King as bourgeois epic 39 The Idylls o f the King as Arthurian paradigm 50 Arthurian literary production after Tennyson (1892-1914) 59 Chapter Two That‘dim, weird battle in the west’: Arthurian literary 73 production and the Great War The cult of Galahad in the nineteenth century 74 v ‘The necessary supply of heroes must be maintained at all cost’: 83 Galahad and the Great War ‘But now I’ve said goodbye to Galahad’: the end of 90 Victorian chivalry and the rebirth of Arthur Memorials and memory: the influence of the Great War on later 101 Arthurian literature Chapter Three ‘Here in the heart of waste and wilderness’: Jessie L. Weston, 111 T.S. Eliot and the Holy Grail iii Jessie Weston and early Grail scholarship 113 T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and the influence of From Ritual to Romance 122 ‘Doth all that haunts the waste and wild mourn?’ the influence of the 129 Idylls on The Waste Land ‘The very spring of our culture’: the Grail in later interwar fiction 139 Conclusion 157 Chapter Four That ‘cleaves to cairn and cromlech still... ’: the Arthurian 160 story in Ireland, Scotland, Cornwall and Wales An ambivalent hero: the Arthurian legend in Ireland and Scotland 164 The chough rises: the Cornish Arthurian renaissance 169 Revival and rebirth: the early twentieth-century Arthurian Legend in 180 Wales An unstable hero: the later twentieth-century Arthur in Wales 190 Chapter Five ‘The dread Pendragon: Britain’s King of Kings’: towards an 201 Anglo-Celtic conception of the Arthurian story ‘The spell of pure romance’: scholarship and the Anglo-Celtic Arthur 204 Early Anglo-Celtic writing: Ernest Rhys and John Masefield 214 ‘That landscape spoke “with a grimly voice’” : David Jones’s In 228 Parenthesis Charles Williams’s Taliessin-cycle: restoring the Grail 236 Conclusion 250 Chaper Six ‘The faith that made us rulers’: T.H. White’sThe Once and 254 Future King and the post-imperial Arthur ‘This is an anachronism [...] a beastly anachronism’: T.H. White’s The 255 Once and Future King and the Arthurian tradition ‘I never could stand these nationalists’: the politics of White’s 268 Arthuriad ‘Merlin’s long gone under and there’s no magic any more’: the post- 283 war Arthur Conclusion ‘ The old order changeth’: towards a new Arthurian legend 303 Notes 313 Bibliography 368 List of Illustrations Figures 1-14 can be found between chapters 2 and 3; figures 15-28 can be found between chapters 4 and 5. Fig. 1 Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Arthur's Tomb - the last meeting o f Lancelot and Guinevere (1854) Fig. 2 Edward Burne-Jones, The Last Sleep o f Arthur in Avalon (1881 -98) Fig. 3 Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Sir Galahad at the Ruined Chapel (1857) Fig. 4 Elizabeth Siddall, The Quest o f the Holy Grail (1855-7) Fig. 5 Edward Burne-Jones, Sir Galahad (1858) Fig. 6 George Frederick Watts, Sir Galahad (1862) Fig. 7 Arthur Hughes, Sir Galahad (1870) Fig. 8 Joseph NOel Patton, Sir Galahad (1879) Fig. 9 Joseph Nbel Patton, Sir Galahad and the Angel (1885) Fig. 10 Edward Burne-Jones, Tennyson Memorial Window, St. Bartholomew’s Church, Haslemere (1899) Fig. 11 An example of German Iron Warrior propaganda (1915) Fig. 12 Arthur Rackham, How Mordred was Slain by Arthur, and How by Him Arthur was Hurt to the Death (1917) Fig. 13 Arthur Rackham, Sir Beaumains Espied upon Great Trees how there Hung Full Goodly Armed Knights by the Neck (1917) Fig. 14 Arthur Rackham, Sir Mordred Went and Laid a Mighty Siege About the Tower o f London (1917) Fig. 15 Photograph of the exterior o f‘The Hall of Chivalry’, Tintagel, Cornwall (2006) Fig. 16 Photograph of the ruins of Tintagel Castle, Cornwall (2006) V Fig. 17 Photograph of King Arthur’s Throne, ‘The Hall of Chivalry’, Tintagel, Cornwall (2006) Fig. 18 Anonymous graving of ‘King Arthur’s Round Table’, Caerleon (1861) Fig. 19 ‘The Tennyson Window’, The Hanbury Arms, Caerleon (2007) Fig. 20 Photograph of the Hanbury Arms and the River Usk (c.1900) Fig. 21 David Jones, Illustration to the Arthurian Legend: the Four Queens find Lancelot Sleeping (1941) Fig. 22 Frontispiece to Charles Williams’s Taliessin through Logres (1938) Fig. 23 T.H. White, four illustrations to The Witch in the Wood( 1939) Fig. 24 Advertisement for Camelot, dir. Joshua Logan (1967) Fig. 25 Advertisement for The Knights o f the Round Table , dir. Richard Thorpe (1953) Fig. 26 Vanessa Redgrave as Guinevere in Camelot , dir. Joshua Logan (1967) Fig. 27 Julie Andrews as Guinevere and Richard Burton as Arthur in the stage production of Lemer and Loewe’s Camelot (1962) Fig. 28 Advertisement for Disney’s The Sword in the Stone, dir. Wolfgang Reitherman (1963) Note This thesis uses a double note system. Endnotes are used for bibliographic information, while footnotes are used to elucidate meaning, or to expand on a point raised in the text. Chapter titles are all taken from Tennyson’s The Idylls o f the King , saving the first, which is taken from The Epic’, an 82- line poem which framed the original ‘Morte d’Arthur’ of 1842.
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