Return Of King Arthur British And American Arthurian Literature Since 1800

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.

The Arthurian legend closes with a promise: On a distant day, when his country calls, the king will return. His lost realm will be regained, and his shattered dream of an ideal world will, at last, be realized. This collection of original essays explores the issue of return in the modern Arthurian legend. With an Introduction by noted scholar Raymond H. Thompson and 13 essays by authors from the fields of literature, art history, film history, and folklore, this collection reveals the flexibility of the legend. Just as the modern legend takes the form current to its generation, the myth of return generates a new legend with each telling. As these authors show, return can come in the form of a noble king or a Caribbean immigrant, with the mystery of an art theft or a dying boy's dream.

Examines the history of the Arthurian legends and their role in English and American literature up to the present. One chapter is devoted to Malory's Morte Darthur.

First published in 1992. This is a collection of works around the legend of King Arthur from both English and American sources. They range from the sixteenth century to the 1980s and includes authors such as Spenser, Swift, Fielding, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Swinburne, Morris, Carr, Hawthorne, Pyle, Richard Wilbur and Wendy M. Mnookin.

Wrapped in the mists of Avalon since the Middle Ages, the Once and Future King made his promised return in the nineteenth century. The Return of King Arthur: The Legend through Victorian Eyes celebrates the unprecedented revival of the Arthurian legend in the arts and popular culture of Victorian Britain (1837-1901). In a rich array of poetry, painting, children's stories, and plays, Arthur and his noble knights and ladies were reborn. The legend was not simply revived: the new generation reinvented the saga and its heroes in their own image, creating metaphors for their notions of monarchy, the roles of men and women in society, and the proper path for children to follow. In The Return of King Arthur, Debra N. Mancoff reveals why the legend resonated so deeply during Victoria's reign. Retold in the poetry of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, William Morris, and Sir Walter Scott, and envisioned in the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and in book illustrations by such artists as Arthur Rackham and Aubrey Beardsley, the legend of King Arthur and his compatriots in chivalry became the code for every facet of Victorian culture. Informative and entertaining, and handsomely illustrated with more than 130 evocative and heroic works of art, The Return of King Arthur captures the romance of this age-old legend and shows us how the Victorian words and images have shaped our own great interest in it today.

Discrete inquiries into 15 forms of the Arthurian legends produced over the last century explore how they have altered the tradition. They consider works from the US and Europe, and those aimed at popular and elite audiences. The overall conclusion is that the "Arthurian revival" is an ongoing event, and has become multivalent, multinational, and multimedia. Originally published in 1992.

This book reveals the breadth and depth of women’s engagements with Arthurian romance in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Tracing the variety of women’s responses to the medieval revival through Gothic literature, travel writing, scholarship, and decorative gift books, it argues that differences in the kinds of Arthurian materials read by and prepared for women produced a distinct female tradition in Arthurian writing. Examining the Arthurian interests of the best-selling female poets of the day, Felicia Hemans and Letitia Elizabeth Landon, and uncovering those of many of their contemporaries, the Arthurian myth in the Romantic period is a vibrant location for debates about the function of romance, the role of the imagination, and women’s place in literary history.

This first comprehensive treatment of Arthurian literature in the English language up until the end of the Middle Ages is now available for the first time in paperback. English people think of Arthur as their own – stamped on the landscape in scores of place-names, echoed in the names of princes even today. Yet some would say the English were the historical Arthur’s bitterest enemies and usurpers of his heritage. The process by which Arthurian legends have become an important part of England’s cultural heritage is traced in this book. Previous studies have concentrated on the handful of chivalric romances, which have given the impression that Arthur is a hero of romantic escapism. This study seeks to provide a more comprehensive and insightful look at the English Arthurian legends and how they evolved. It focuses primarily upon the literary aspects of Arthurian legend, but it also makes some important political and social observations.