Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The Arthurian revival in Victorian Britain, part of a broader interest in medievalism, was both a literary and a cultural phenomenon. Arthurian themes were appropriated and reinvented in the areas of the visual arts, socio-political commentary, interior decoration, and war memorials, for example. In a literary context, a diverse group of writers resurrected King Arthur: besides key poetic works by Alfred Tennyson, William Morris, Matthew Arnold, and Algernon Swinburne, texts include the novelist and politician Edward Bulwer-Lytton's eclectic epic poem King Arthur (1848); Dinah Mulock's (later Mrs Craik) imaginative Avillion and Other Tales (1853); the Reverend Robert Hawker's idiosyncratic The Quest of the Sangraal (1864); and Sebastian Evans' (journalist, politician, artist) Arthurian poems published under the title In the Studio: A Decade of Poems (1875).Arthurian subject matter (the matter of Britain) was utilized across genres, although far more Arthurian poetry than Arthurian prose fiction was produced. This was partly due to the subject's association with the tradition of writing epic poems; the literary establishment sought to express nationalist sentiment in epic form, which was deemed more appropriate than the newer form of the novel. A constant stream of minor allusions to Arthurian legend in poetry, drama, and prose fiction is evident from 1800, but in the 1830s significant ... log in or subscribe to read full text