So over the past few weeks I have featured Homer’s Iliad and two anonymous poems: the Anglo-Saxon Seafarer and the Middle English poem Sir Gawain & The Green Knight.Īs I said in relation to Sir Gawain & The Green Knight, the epic poem draws on the Arthurian legend, which was also known as ‘The Matter Of Britain’ in the Middle Ages, for it’s subject matter. You may recall that the David Gemmell Legend Award longlist came out recently, so during the voting period (which closes tomorrow, 31 July) I have been featuring what I consider to be legendary and/or epic poems each Tuesday-all as part of celebrating the epic tradition, which is the essence of what the Gemmell Awards are all about. Because it was the first written of the poems and the last in chronological sequence, I have included the first, and also the final two stanzas today. 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.The Morte D’Arthur, or Death Of Arthur, is probably the most well known in Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, which draws on Sir Thomas Malory’s medieval work of the same name ( Le Morte D’Arthur) as well as the Celtic Mabinogion.

Arnold, on the other hand, advocates moderation, so that the loss of a loved one produces neither debilitating agony nor only a mild melancholy. For Tennyson, love leads to trust, and when trust is shattered, death soon follows. The chapters that follow are each devoted to a particular author's use of Arthurian material in an exploration of love and death. 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.

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. 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. For centuries, accounts of King Arthur and his court have fascinated historians, scholars, poets, and readers.

Tennyson arthurian poems