Idylls of the King Themes

Oof. This one's a doozy.Here's the thing. The success of the fellowship Arthur creates among his knights in Idylls of the King depends upon their loyalty to an oath they swear to him. And after Art...

The very first love-vow in the Idylls of the King is bromantical: it's the one Arthur and Lancelot swear to one another on the battlefield. We already know their relationship is doomed to collapse...

Arthur founds the Round Table on the principles of faith in the basic honesty of human beings and man’s capacity for self-control and self-improvement. So it makes perfect sense that he has no qu...

In a poem whose highest compliment is “most human,” it’s not a great thing to be associated with animals. Vivien, whom the poem describes as a serpent coiling about her prey, and Mordred, who...

The first of the Idylls of the King, “The Coming of Arthur,” tells two different stories about Arthur’s origins and refuses to confirm one or the other as true. Arthur’s reality is therefor...

The good king Arthur comes to the throne with a definite plan for his kingdom: he wants to unite everyone under him in allegiance to common principles of honesty, justice, and purity. His marriage...

The Idylls of the King contrast various types of spirituality, from the strict asceticism of characters like Percivale, Pellam, and Galahad, who withdraw from this world in search of the one beyond...

Is Arthur a flesh-and-blood human being or a fairy child dropped from the heavens by a mysterious floating dragon ship? Now there's a question. Tennyson never comes down on one side or the other in...