CHAPTER NINE
Tennyson, Idylls of the King
She like a new disease, unknown to men,
Creeps, no precaution used, among the crowd,
Makes wicked lightnings of her eyes, and saps
The fealty of our friends, and stirs the pulse
With devil’s leaps, and poisons half the young. 261
— “Guinevere,” Idylls of The King by Alfred Lord Tennyson
About the Idylls
Other than Malory, one of the best known, or at least easily recognized, works of Arthurian literature is Tennyson’s Idylls of the King.262 It rose to bestseller status in the midst of Victorian Arthurian mania and has retained its top status for more than a century. “It was Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who brought the Arthurian tradition to the forefront of literature and art in the form of his Idylls of the King,”263 asserts Comer.
Idylls is a
