CHAPTER ELEVEN
Guinevere in The Early Twentieth Century and T. H. White
Arthuriana for a New Age
After Tennyson and the Victorians reignited the obsession with the Arthurian legend, interest in it only grew. Muriel Whitaker explains why: “The Victorian interest in Arthurian legend persisted into the twentieth century, thanks to lingering Pre-Raphaelitism and an attachment to social and moral values expressed through the image of the medieval knight. Sir Thomas Malory’s Mort D’Arthur remained the chief source for writers and artists, but the Protestant ethic of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King also affected their treatments until mid-century.”336
According to A Bibliography of Modern Arthuriana (1500-2000), 162 Arthurian novels were published between 1884 and 1983 and nearly 40 short stori
