Idylls of the King

I have to admit that when I recently read Tennyson's Idylls of the King, it was bad timing. I am a little burnt out on Arthur at the moment. Or to be more accurate, I am a little burnt out on anything to do with Empire, thanks to some unpleasant encounters with a few neoColonialists over the past year or so. The Arthur story, then, probably wasn't the best thing for me to be reading, but I'd had it on my reading agenda for two years, and felt I ought to get to it.

That said, how can you not like Tennyson's poetry? (At least the blank verse.) There are moments where it just transports you to another time and place. I loved the grandeur of what he's done, though there were some aspects of his take on Arthur that wore on me as I read, particularly how unflawed the king was.

Still, he's Tennyson. The verse is beautiful, and that alone made the read worthwhile.



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