Idylls of the King (Penguin Classics)
£3.24
King Arthur in The Victorian Age - This hugely impressive work of poetry, although based on Malory s epic Morte d Arthur and other early books, does not, in truth shed much light on the Arthurian Age, but it is immensely revealing about the Victorian era.In these poems, Arthur is an English gentleman rather than a Dark Age Celtic warlord, or even a medieval ruler. But this approach serves to illuminate what was best about the Victorians, decency, courage, self belief. It is fashionable to knock the society of England in the Nineteenth Century as being repressive, dictatorial, even hypocritical. Tennyson s poetry, along with the work of authors like Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson show, largely, a positive side to the time.My only regret with The Idylls is that the shorter poem by Tennyson on the subject of Arthurian romance, the cracking Lady of Shallot is not included in this book.
Books like this are the reason we learn to read - This is the story about Arthur and the tales of Camelot. Obviously. But for those of you who don t know more than what you ve seen on TV or the movies, read this book. Read about Balin and Balan, read about Elaine, read about Guenivere. It s so much more fulfilling to search them out and to find them, than to have someone splash their character on a screen for you. My favorite stanza in the entire book is when Arthur talks about commitment. Commitment to his cause, to life, to God, to everything: Arthur sat Crown d on the dais, and his warriors cried, Be thou the king, and we will work thy will Who love thee. Then the King in low deep tones, And simple words of great authority, Bound them by so strait vows to his own self That when they rose, knighted from kneeling, some Were pale as at the passing of a ghost, Some flushe d, and others dazed, as one who wakes Half--blinded at the coming of a light.Awesome isn t it?