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The Return of King Arthur: The Legend through Victorian Eyes by Debra N. Mancoff

1997; Scriptoriun Press; Volume: 7; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/art.1997.0026

1934-1539

Karen Hodder,

Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies

158ARTHURIANA and lavish as its illustrations are, the text of The Return ofKing Arthur is deeply flawed and this book must be approached with the strongest ofcaveats. MAUREEN FRIES State University ofNew York College at Fredonia debra N mancoff, The Return ofKing Arthur: The Legend through Victorian Eyes. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1995. Pp. 176. color illus. isbn: 0-8109-3782-4. $35. This attractively-produced bookapplies the term 'Victorian' ratherloosely, since many of its examples post-date Victoria's reign. It also seems to equate Tennyson's vision with that of the age. Such a popular volume may fairly shun controversy, but less bland homage to Malory's, Tennyson's and Pre-Raphaelite models might have been admitted. Even Beardsley, in this reading, is turned to favour and to prettiness. The reader is offered a brief introduction, plus six chapters on the subject ofthe growth ofthe Arthurian legend in the Middle Ages, the nineteenth-century revival, Tennyson's re-casting of the legend, Arthurian women (especially Elaine, Enide, Guenevere and Vivien), Tennyson's Galahad and 'the construction of Victorian Childhood' (102) (a topic pursued into the twentieth-century), and fin de Steele responses to Arthur. The book resembles a popularisation of parts of Girouard's influential Return to CameUt, with more Tennyson and more gender studies and a stylistic blunder like 'wide-eyed ingenuity' (32). The survey seems to aim at non-specialists with no French and less Latin (even 'nobUsse oblige'is translated (38), though Chevalierde U Charrete is not (66)), and the blurb emphasizes reactions 'today' Professor Mancoffacknowledges some academic mentors but, unfortunately, none seems to have been a medievalist, for the summaries ofChretien's and Malory's narratives are full ofinaccuracies, distortions and romantic embroideries: Geraint is not a Malory character (19), nor Gawain a Cornishman, nor Meleagant a king (66). Guenevere flees from Mordred to the Tower of London, not a nunnery (19); and Malory does not speculate about either's interior life. Even Malory's greatest admirer might hesitate to characterize his magnificently mysterious Morte Darthur as 'a clearly-crafted narrative' (20), and the Vulgate title is Mort Artu (78). (Ci. Thomas Gray who appears as 'Grey' (22).) Professor Mancoff's persistent habit ofcallingArthur 'the Once and Future King' and her allusion to the 'mists of Avalon' anachronistically evoke (one assumes intentionally) twentieth-century novels about the legend. Nothing is said about the extent ofTennysons or the artists' firsthand knowledge ofthings medieval or ofthe power this conferred on those mediators of Arthurianism. Such flaws vitiate the author's thesis about 'Victorian transformation' (9). More successful is the account of Victoria's and Albert's promotions of this 'transformation' during the 1840s, as well as of nineteenth-century prescriptive literature for women which imaged middle class home life as a transaction between a knight-errant and a Lady-wife (83). The point about the influence on children of 'medieval' domestic furnishings is a good one (106); and the quotation from N. H. Mallock's 1972 spoof ofTennyson is a delightful item (135). REVIEWS159 Professor Mancoff is Chair of the Art History Program at Beloit College in Wisconsin, and her book will appeal chiefly through its copious colour and blackand -white illustrations, beautifully photographed by Kenneth Cain. It is a useful supplement to Muriel Whitaker's The Legends ofArthur in Art. She seems especially enthused by the figure ofElaine, represented by an excellent range ofpictures, many from private collections, like the paintings byArthur Hughes and Edward Corbauld (80, 81). Much space is given, too, to the female illustrators Eleanor Fortiscue Brickdale and Florence Harrison (neithet Victorian), as well as to Julia Margaret Cameron. However, this aspect of the book also suffers from some shortcomings, such as the inaccurate descriptions of Riviere's painting (146). The account of one of Maclise's illustrations for Moxon's 1857 edition ofTennyson's Poems is both questionable and inflated (53), and Mancoffneglects to compare it with her previous reproduction of Beardsley's rendering ofArthur and the Lady ofthe Lake (50) which also incidentally contradicts her statement that 'there is never a trace of callow youth in (Arthurs) appearance' (56). There is no reference to the current theory that Morris...