Morte d’Arthur

‘the death of Arthur’

‘the passing of Arthur’
 The Painting
• The Last Sleep of Arthur by
Edward Burne-Jones.
 Malory
• Sir Thomas Malory wrote a poem called ‘Le
Morte D’Arthur’ – ‘the death of Arthur’.
• Malory took a body of legends, mostly French in
origin and adapted them to English life with an
English perspective.
• Malory’s sources were largely a selection of
courtly romances about Lancelot. These stories
purport to be historical accounts of King Arthur
and his knights and of their quest for the Holy
Grail.
 Malory
• Although it is probable that a real Arthur
did exist (it is a common name), there is
little actual historical basis for the stories,
which are largely legend and folklore.
 Key Information
• Published in ‘Poems’ (1842).
• There are small links between Arthur the king and Arthur
Henry Hallam.
• In the same year Alfred Tennyson wrote his first
Arthurian poem "Morte d'Arthur“, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge claimed "as to Arthur, you could not by any
means make a poem national to Englishmen. What have
we to do with him?“
• This implication that Arthurian literature is escapist and
irrelevant is a familiar criticism. In contrast and perhaps
response, Tennyson called the Arthurian legend "the
greatest of all poetical subjects," which partly explains
why this tradition so heavily influenced his writing.
 Arthurian Interest
• Tennyson was always interested in King
Arthur and tales of knights and legends.
• This poem is a careful expansion, and at
times embellishment, of Malory's account
of the conclusion of Arthur's life with the
exception of a few references to Excalibur.
 The Poem
• Tennyson employs the standard medieval
romance literary structure that puts the
protagonist through a series of tests that
try and educate him.
 Discuss
• What does Bedivere learn about the
relation between keeping the faith and
being able to believe or have faith?

• Find relevant quotes to support your

ideas.
 Discuss
• What do we know of Tennyson’s
relationship with Arthur Henry Hallam?

• How could we link the character of Arthur

to Hallam?
 Structure – AO3
• Blank verse is usually described as
unrhymed iambic pentameters with
frequent enjambment. An adaptable form,
it can convey anything from elevated
thought to everyday speech, and was
once universally employed for drama and
epic. Indeed, so easy is blank verse to
write that it needs constraints, challenges
and melodic invention if it is not become
slipshod and boring.
 Structure – AO3
• Blank verse is not an escape from rhyme,
but a replacement of rhyme by more
powerful and carefully-woven
requirements.
 Structure – AO3
• Enjambment — the running-on or overflowing of sense and rhythm
of one line into the next — is clear enough: So all day long the noise
of battle roll'd among the mountains by the winter sea; etc. But so
too is a 'blocking out' by pauses:
So all day long | the noise of battle roll'd |
Among the mountains | by the winter sea ||
Until King Arthur's table | man by man |
Had fallen in Lyonnesse | about their Lord ||

• The cadences (a falling) create these effects, so strongly marked

that we are surprised to find no rhymes, so satisfyingly do the lines
end. But there's also the melody of the long vowels, which overflow
the metre:
So all day long | the noise of battle roll'd
 Structure – AO3
• The subtle alliteration:

So all day long the noise of battle roll'd

Among the mountains by the winter sea;
Until King Arthur's table, man by man,
Had fallen in Lyonnesse about their Lord,
 Structure – AO3
• The pacing: the slow movement of the first four lines, a
pause coming after then in line five to take breath, the
quickening in the singly-moulded line six, and then a
varied pacing helped by the repetition of Sir Bedivere to
the full flood of:
On one side lay the ocean, and on one
Lay a great water, and the moon was full.

• Which is echoed, distantly, with the d's largely replacing

the more liquid l's is the final:
Look'd one black dot against the verge of dawn,
And on the mere the wailing died away.