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Malory’s Magic Book: King Arthur in Children’s Literature, 1862-1960 Elly McCausland PhD University of York English December 2015 2 Abstract This thesis examines adaptations of Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur produced for children between 1862 and 1960. It aims to interrogate the complex link between children and the Arthurian legend that has existed since J. T. Knowles’s first adaptation for a juvenile audience in 1862, and which remains strong today. By comparing authors’ alterations to their medieval source, I explore the ‘child’ as a discursive construct, as a mutable and protean category that is equally revelatory of assumptions about adult identity as about childhood itself. Tracing adaptations of the Morte chronologically, I examine the ways in which they participate in wider cultural dialogues relating to national heritage, citizenship, mental health and masculine development through their representations of childhood. Against the backdrop of empire, changes in educational policy, the increasing application of psychology to childcare and two world wars, the diverse ways in which this versatile text is offered as relevant to children illuminates both shifting conceptions of childhood and the complex relationship between adapters and their imagined child readers. This study contributes to enquiries regarding the refashioning of Arthur and the function and manifestation of medievalism, and to studies of children’s literature, by illuminating the ways in which the elusive ‘child’ has been used to focus shifting perceptions regarding the essence and significance of the Arthurian legend over a century. A note on names The title and spelling of Malory’s text varies across editions. This thesis will refer throughout to ‘the Morte Darthur’, and ‘the Morte’ for brevity. Spellings of certain Arthurian names also vary across adaptations, particularly Lancelot/Launcelot and Guinevere/Guenever. When quoting directly from texts, the thesis will use the spelling as it appears in the original. However, during discussion of characters, names will be standardised thus: Agravaine, Gawain, Guinevere, Isolde, Lancelot, Merlin, Mordred, Pellinore, Tristram. 3 Contents Abstract 2 Contents 3 List of illustrations 4 Acknowledgements 5 Author’s declaration 6 Introduction 7-32 Chapter 1: Heritage and humanity: King Arthur in the classroom 33-68 Chapter 2: Risk and revenue: adventurous masculinity in the work of Howard 69-107 Pyle, Henry Gilbert and Alfred Pollard Chapter 3: The ill-made adult and the mother’s curse: psychoanalysing the 108-139 Arthurian child in T. H. White’s The Once and Future King Chapter 4: ‘Monty Python was not that far away’: the instability of Arthur in the 140-173 1950s Chapter 5: ‘For a little while a magician’: potent childish fantasies in John 174-204 Steinbeck’s Acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights Conclusion: at the crossing-places 205-215 Bibliography 216-271 4 List of Illustrations Figure 1. Clara L. Thomson, Selections from Le Morte Darthur (London: Horace 48 Marshall & Son, 1902) Figure 2. Illustration by Arthur Rackham in Alfred Pollard, The Romance of King 74 Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table (London: Macmillan, 1917), xii. Figure 3. ‘The battle with the Sable Knight’. Illustration by Howard Pyle in The Story 84 of King Arthur and his Knights (New York: Dover Publications, 1965), 52. Figure 4. ‘Young Owen appeals to the King’. Illustration by Walter Crane in Henry 87 Gilbert, King Arthur’s Knights (Edinburgh: T. C. & E. C. Jack, n.d.), ii. Figure 5. ‘Young Perceval questions Sir Owen’. Illustration by Walter Crane in 88 Gilbert, King Arthur’s Knights, 168. Figure 6. Illustrations by Lotte Reiniger in Roger Lancelyn Green, King Arthur and 152 his Knights of the Round Table (London: Penguin Books, 1955), 15; 30; 176. Figure 7. ‘Mordred hurled himself forward to smite the king’. Illustration by Donald 160 Seton Cammell in Alice Hadfield, King Arthur and the Round Table (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1953), 216. Figure 8. ‘Long stood Sir Bedivere’. Illustration by Donald Seton Cammell in 161 Hadfield, King Arthur, 224. Figure 9. ‘Sir Lancelot du Lac’ and ‘Sir Galahad’. Illustrations by Donald Seton 162 Cammell in Hadfield, King Arthur, 57; 153. Figure 10. Dedication to Mary Steinbeck in John Steinbeck, The Acts of King Arthur 186 and his Noble Knights (London: Penguin Classics, 2001), vii. 5 Acknowledgements First, an enormous thank you to the English Department at the University of York, without whose funding this project would not have been possible. It has been a privilege to be part of the postgraduate community here. I am indebted to my supervisors, Matt Townend and Trev Broughton, for their invaluable guidance, patience and support. Particular thanks must also be given to Trev for her generous provision of home-grown vegetables, which have sustained me over three busy years. I am also very grateful for the input of Helen Fulton, who served as my supervisor for the first year of this thesis, to Katherine McClune, who inspired my interest in the Morte Darthur, and to Diane Purkiss, for supervising my early work on this project at undergraduate level. Thank you also to my parents, who provided me with a roof over my head for the duration of this project, and who tirelessly plastered, painted and polished said roof for the sake of my wellbeing. 6 Author’s declaration I, Elly McCausland, declare that this thesis is a presentation of original work and I am the sole author. This work has not previously been presented for an award at this, or any other, University. All sources are acknowledged as References. The licence for this thesis does not apply to third party artworks reproduced herein. Acknowledgement is made to Penguin Random House LLC for permission to use artwork by John Steinbeck. A version of Chapter One has been accepted, subject to revisions, by the Review of English Studies. 7 Introduction ‘I hope you are not being stupid about children,’ asked Merlyn, looking vaguely about him. ‘We have high authority for being born again, like little ones. Grown- ups have developed an unpleasant habit lately, I notice, of comforting themselves for their degradation by pretending that children are childish. I trust we are free from this?’ ‘Everybody knows that children are more intelligent than their parents’. ‘You and I know it, but the people who are going to read this book do not’.1 Defeated by his treacherous son Mordred following the collapse of his kingdom, T. H. White’s King Arthur finds himself, as part of a dream-like afterlife, in Merlin’s cave. Here he is offered the chance to return to his childhood for an evening in order to learn a series of lessons deemed necessary by the magician and his committee of talking animals. Sceptical, Arthur declines the offer to be ‘born again, like little ones’, and is swiftly admonished by Merlin. In this meta-textual exchange, White’s narrative seems to appeal to a child audience. The assertion ‘everybody knows that children are more intelligent than their parents’ appears intended to delight a child reader, flattering his or her youthful knowledge and reversing the traditional dynamic whereby the child is at the mercy of superior adult intelligence. Merlin suggests Arthur should feel privileged by the chance to be ‘born again’ through magic, linking the state of being a ‘little one’ not with naivety and ignorance but instead with ‘high authority’. Arthur’s matter-of-fact presentation of this as a universal truth – ‘everybody knows’ – which is then qualified by Merlin – ‘you and I know it’ – posits the child reader as part of an exclusive group. Forever misunderstood and patronised by condescending adults, the child is here liberated and placed in the privileged position of having its true abilities recognised by the legendary figures of King Arthur and his famous magical adviser. Somewhat paradoxically, the child’s very status as marginalised and excluded places it among a knowledgeable elite. Yet Merlin’s warning, ‘the people who are going to read this book do not’, complicates this relationship. By designating ‘the people who are going to read this book’ as those very adults who are 1 T. H. White, The Once and Future King (London: Harper Collins, 1996), 710. First published 1958. 8 ‘stupid about children’, Merlin calls the status of the implied reader into question. Is this a text for children or adults? Why is the child credited with superior intelligence while the adult is dismissed as ‘stupid’? Are these two categories distinct, or is the reader assumed to occupy both spaces at different moments? What ‘degradations’ cause adults to pretend that children are childish, is this something that has only happened ‘lately’, and what is the essence of this childishness? Why does White remodel Malory’s Morte Darthur as a series of lessons presented to the king by anthropomorphised geese, ants and badgers? Such questions take us to the heart of the complex relationship between children and the Arthurian legend. I. The protean king and the variable child: ‘strenuous’ appropriations of Arthur It has been pointed out that the Morte Darthur, Thomas Malory’s fifteenth-century tale of King Arthur and his knights, does not obviously lend itself to juvenile versions. ‘Malory did not write for children,’ Andrew Lynch remarks. ‘His book makes no concessions to a young audience and he never interpellates its audience as young’.2 Furthermore, the Morte contains very few child characters and even fewer depictions of childhood. Yet, as with Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver’s Travels, this largely childless text has been continually produced in children’s versions since 1862 when James Knowles – architect, scholar and friend of Alfred Tennyson – published the first version of the legend for children, initiating a trend that shows no signs of abating today.3 The diverse ways in which the Morte has been reworked for a child audience, and the changing and multifaceted ‘child’ envisaged by these texts, are the subjects of this thesis.