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Full Description
The revival of interest in Arthurian legend in the 19th century was a remarkable phenomenon, apparently at odds with the spirit of the age. Tennyson was widely criticised for his choice of a medieval topic; yet The Idylls of the Kingwere accepted as the national epic, and a flood of lesser works was inspired by them, on both sides of the Atlantic. Elisabeth Brewer and Beverly Taylor survey the course of Arthurian literature from 1800 to the present day, and give an account of all the major English and American contributions. Some of the works are well-known, but there are also a host of names which will be new to most readers, and some surprises, such as J. Comyns Carr's King Arthur, rightly ignored as a text, but a piece oftheatrical history, for Sir Henry Irving played King Arthur, Ellen Terry was Guinevere, Arthur Sullivan wrote the music, and Burne-Jones designed the sets.The Arthurian works of the Pre-Raphaelites are discussed at length, as are the poemsof Edward Arlington Robinson, John Masefield and Charles Williams. Other writers have used the legends as part of a wider cultural consciousness: The Waste Land, David Jones's In Parenthesis and The Anathemata, and the echoes ofTristan and Iseult in Finnigan's Wake are discussed in this context. Novels on Arthurian themes are given their due place, from the satirical scenes of Thomas Love Peacock's The Misfortunes of Elphin and Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court to T.H. White's serio-comic The Once and Future King and the many recent novelists who have turned away from the chivalric Arthur to depict him as a Dark Age ruler.The Return of King Arthurincludes a bibliography of British and American creative writing relating to the Arthurian legends from 1800 to the present day.
Table of Contents
Prologue: The Nature of the Arthurian Stories 1 (14)
The Return of Arthur: Nineteenth-Century 15 (19)
British Medievalism and Arthurian Tradition
Reawakening Tradition: British Literature, 34 (34)
1800-1830
Arthur Redux: British Literature of the 68 (21)
Mid-Nineteenth Century
An Epic in `the Fashion of the Day': Idylls 89 (40)
of the King
The Pre-Raphaelites: Morris and Swinburne 129(33)
Arthur's 'Return' in the New World: 162(42)
American Literature of the Nineteenth and
Early Twentieth Centuries
Dramatic New Developments: Early 204(31)
Twentieth-Century English Literature
`The Waste Land' and After 235(55)
Arthurian Literature since World War II 290(32)
Appendix I: Arthurian editions published 322(2)
between 1800 and 1850
Arthurian Literature Since 1800: A 324(41)
Chronological List
Notes 365(12)
Index 377
