Who is the narrator, can she or he read minds, and, more importantly, can we trust her or him?
Third-Person Omniscient
Well, it's a bit more complicated than all that.
The third-person omniscient label applies to the parts of the Idylls narrated by the main speaker. He establishes his connection to Britain by referring to it as “this isle” (“Coming,” 5), which creates a sense of community between him, his audience, and the characters in the poem: they all inhabit “this isle.” This is a poem spoken by a Briton, for Britons.
But this speaker often hands over his narrative duties to the characters in the poem, letting them have their say. In fact, this is one of his favorite narrative techniques. To tell the story of Arthur’s origins, for example, he has King Leodogran include two different accounts of his birth—one from two of his knights and the other from his sister Bellicent. They tell completely different stories, which shows us that the Idylls are just as interested in different people’s perceptions of events as the events themselves. And of course, these perceptions are limited, rather than omniscient.
This technique of telling a story from the point of view of different characters is one that Tennyson borrows from the Victorian novel, which often uses devices like letters and stories-within-stories to narrate events. That’s why some people call Tennyson’s narration in Idylls of the King novelistic.