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Location
Albuquerque, NM
Document Type
Paper
Event Website
https://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-52.htm
Start Date
31-7-2022 4:00 PM
End Date
31-7-2022 4:50 PM
Description
Encounters with the alien other commonly conjure images from science fiction film and literature—advanced spacecraft, alien species in human form from remote places of the galaxy, or in alternate places either in the subterranean realms or on the planet Earth. Varied as they are, a ubiquitous quality of strangeness accompanies these encounters, from those in nineteenth-century writers like Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, through early 20th-century Lovecraft narratives, and in contemporary fiction and film. A writer who may not come immediately to mind is Alfred Lord Tennyson, the poet laureate of England from 1850 until his death in 1892. Tennyson was a visionary poet, a writer who seemed to intuit that the nineteenth century represented a liminal space between a remote, nostalgic past and a future of both undetermined marvels and menaces. Steeped in Celtic lore and intent on composing an epic on the Arthurian Legend, Tennyson also foresaw future space flight, and perhaps also a time in which the world might achieve perfection. This paper focuses on the idea of King Arthur as an alien other in Tennyson’s epic poem, Idylls of the King, twelve poems first published serially between 1859–1885 and finally as an epic work in its current form. In the first idyll, “The Coming of the King,” one version of Arthur’s origin is mythopoeic—he is “sent” and not born on “a night when the bounds of heaven and earth were lost,” (l. 371) delivered to shore on the ninth wave, from a sky ship “bright with a shining people on the decks” (l. 375). In the final idyll, “The Passing of Arthur,” the moribund king boards a ship inhabited by three weeping queens while one sole survivor of Camelot, Bedivere, mourns this loss and anticipates his own alienation: “And I, the last, go forth companionless, / And the days darken round me, and the years, / Among new men, strange faces, other minds” (ll. 404-406). As Arthur’s vessel receded into the horizon, “from the great deep to the great deep he goes” (l. 443), Bedivere heard “faint / As beyond the limit of the world, / . . . Sounds, as if some fair city were one voice / Around a king returning from his wars” (ll. 456-461). “Born before his time” Arthur is a visionary artist, a bringer of the light, different not only in degree but possibly also in kind to other men, as several passages in the Idylls show. What is unusual about the portrayal of the alien other in Tennyson’s text is its medieval setting, the origin and fate of its hero, Arthur, and the strange twilight alienation of Bedivere, his companion. Tennyson was a poet who saw both “fore and aft.” Early in his career, he anticipated aircraft travel in “Locksley Hall” (1842); moreover, the strange, almost nihilistic attitude of belatedness expressed by Bedivere in the final idyll is anticipated by that of Ulysses’ men in “The Lotos- Eaters” (1832-1833)—a feeling often expressed in texts of the alien other.
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Included in
“Strange Faces, Other Minds” Tennyson’s Idylls of the King and the Alien Other
Albuquerque, NM
Encounters with the alien other commonly conjure images from science fiction film and literature—advanced spacecraft, alien species in human form from remote places of the galaxy, or in alternate places either in the subterranean realms or on the planet Earth. Varied as they are, a ubiquitous quality of strangeness accompanies these encounters, from those in nineteenth-century writers like Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, through early 20th-century Lovecraft narratives, and in contemporary fiction and film. A writer who may not come immediately to mind is Alfred Lord Tennyson, the poet laureate of England from 1850 until his death in 1892. Tennyson was a visionary poet, a writer who seemed to intuit that the nineteenth century represented a liminal space between a remote, nostalgic past and a future of both undetermined marvels and menaces. Steeped in Celtic lore and intent on composing an epic on the Arthurian Legend, Tennyson also foresaw future space flight, and perhaps also a time in which the world might achieve perfection. This paper focuses on the idea of King Arthur as an alien other in Tennyson’s epic poem, Idylls of the King, twelve poems first published serially between 1859–1885 and finally as an epic work in its current form. In the first idyll, “The Coming of the King,” one version of Arthur’s origin is mythopoeic—he is “sent” and not born on “a night when the bounds of heaven and earth were lost,” (l. 371) delivered to shore on the ninth wave, from a sky ship “bright with a shining people on the decks” (l. 375). In the final idyll, “The Passing of Arthur,” the moribund king boards a ship inhabited by three weeping queens while one sole survivor of Camelot, Bedivere, mourns this loss and anticipates his own alienation: “And I, the last, go forth companionless, / And the days darken round me, and the years, / Among new men, strange faces, other minds” (ll. 404-406). As Arthur’s vessel receded into the horizon, “from the great deep to the great deep he goes” (l. 443), Bedivere heard “faint / As beyond the limit of the world, / . . . Sounds, as if some fair city were one voice / Around a king returning from his wars” (ll. 456-461). “Born before his time” Arthur is a visionary artist, a bringer of the light, different not only in degree but possibly also in kind to other men, as several passages in the Idylls show. What is unusual about the portrayal of the alien other in Tennyson’s text is its medieval setting, the origin and fate of its hero, Arthur, and the strange twilight alienation of Bedivere, his companion. Tennyson was a poet who saw both “fore and aft.” Early in his career, he anticipated aircraft travel in “Locksley Hall” (1842); moreover, the strange, almost nihilistic attitude of belatedness expressed by Bedivere in the final idyll is anticipated by that of Ulysses’ men in “The Lotos- Eaters” (1832-1833)—a feeling often expressed in texts of the alien other.
https://dc.swosu.edu/mythcon/mc52/schedule/21
Comments
Paper: Dr. Rebecca Umland
“Strange Faces, Other Minds” Tennyson’ s Idylls of the King and the Alien Other
Tech Mod: Ben Dressler