Sanico, Jay Anthonie A. World Literature Santos, Joseph Gapayo, Dominic Doarte Avila, John Glenn the passing of arthur from

Sanico, Jay Anthonie A. World Literature
Santos, Joseph
Gapayo, Dominic Doarte
Avila, John Glenn


THE PASSING OF ARTHUR
from “The Idylls of the King”
Alfred Lord Tennyson


The Overview


The Idylls of the King (1859-1865) is a series of twelve poems written by Alfred Lord Tennyson. It is a narrative poem which depicts a romantic legend – that of King Arthur and his renowned Knights of the Round Table. The Passing of Arthur is the last poem in the series and it portrays the knight Sir Bedivere who narrates the remaining moments he had shared with King Arthur.


The Author

Alfred Lord Tennyson was born on August 5, 1809 to George Clayton Tennyson and Elizabeth Fytche Tennyson and grew up in a village in Somersby, Lincolnshire. It was his mother who sown the seeds of poetry and literature into his heart. She used to tell her children James Beattie's Minstrel, James Thomson's The Seasons, or the work of Felicia Hemans. Alfred became interested with the seventeenth and eighteenth century poetry. Thus at a young age, he had written his own pieces which includes a blank verse drama, The Devil and the Lady.

Soon enough, Alfred became fond of the Arthurian Legend. The Lady of Shallot, Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere and Galahad were among his early works inspired by King Arthur. Tennyson has also a childhood friend, Arthur Henry Hallam who was very close to him. Hallam died at an early age of twenty-two due to cerebral haemorrhage. Alfred dedicated to him In Memoriam. Moreover, later in 1833 after Hallam’s death, he drafted Morte d’Arthur which was later incorporated into “The Passing of Arthur”; it is said that the draft of Morte d’Arthur appear in the same notebook as “In Memoriam”. It can be considered that the character Arthur relates to Alfred both in his personal and literary lives.