著者

上村 盛人

出版者

奈良教育大学

雑誌

奈良教育大学紀要. 人文・社会科学 (ISSN:05472393)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.28, no.1, pp.35-53, 1979-11-15

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Tennyson had been greatly interested in the legends of King Arthur since his boyhood, because he had always felt the "passion of the past" even from a boy. However, when he wrote "Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere," the first treating of Arthurian theme, he had probably no intention of enlarging it into a longer poem. The germ of Idylls of the King was "Morte d'Arthur" started in 1833. and the final complete edition of the Idylls was published in 1888. Thus for more than fifty years Tennyson had been engaged in completing the work. Yet, his version of the Arthurian legends is quite uniquely his own since he seems to have inserted his own ambiguous and rather pessimistic vision towards the Victorian society into the framework of the Arthurian story. In 1872 Swinburne harshly attacked Tennyson's Idylls in his critical pamphlet, "Under the Microscope." According to Swinburne, "the moral tone of the Arthurian story has been lowered and degraded by Mr.Tennyson's mode of treatment." Swinburne had found in the legends of King Arthur "something almost of Hellenic dignity and significance" just like Aeschylus' Oresteian tragedy. Tennyson degraded the original noble story, Swinburne said, by making Arthur into a "wittol", Guenevere into a "woman of intrigue", Launcelot into a "co-espondent", and Vivien into "the most base and repulsive person". Swinburne regarded Tennyson's representation of Tristram and Iseult as an outrageous fiction which was "perilously akin to lying." Tennyson and Swinburne are seemingly contrastive and antagonistic. In the skilful management of poetical technique, however, both poets were equally excellent as "word-musician." And the two poets had almost the same view of the "changing world of changeless law." Living in such a world of changeless change, both poets sought for something changeless and everlasting. Tennyson found it in the "principle of immortal Love" as is embodied by King Arthur himself in the Idylls. However, as the last book of the Idylls implies, Tennyson's faith in "immortal Love" was rather precarious, living as he was in the transitional Victorian era. On the other hand, Swinburne who was one of the leading advocates of "art for art's sake" thought that only the great work done by the great artist was immortal. Strongly opposed to Tennyson's degradation of the legendary story, Swinburne, true to "the dear old story," produced his own version and published it as Tristram of Lyonesse in 1882, though in Swinburne's poem Wagnerian 'Liebestod'and the existence of Fate were idiosyncratically emphasized. It was somewhat ironical that Tennyson, a conservative poet as a spokesman of the Victorian society, was rather radical in his interpretation of the Arthurian story and that Swinburne, a radical aesthete, was rather conservative in his treatment of the story of King Arthur. Tennyson stressed the Christian element of the legends, implying his own ambiguous sentiment towards his own society at the same time, while Swinburne emphasized the tragic element with characteristically Swinburnian touch.