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Making One Music With the King: The Platypus Reads Part LIX



Tennyson composed the idylls over a long period of time and it seems that he did not have a clear idea of the overall structure when he started, though he does seem to have toyed with the idea of having twelve from the beginning. Still, it seems that their final arrangement has some sort of logic to it and I suggest what follows as one possible scheme.

Parallels are important in Tennyson's "Idylls of the King." As well as parallels between various characters, the overall structure of the work seems parallel with "The Coming of Arthur" and "The Passing of Arthur" as bookends and "The Holy grail" as the centerpoint (though with 12, not 13, idylls it does not fall at the exact center) around which the other idylls pivot. That leaves nine idylls left. However, following Tennyson's original ordering, we can condense "The Marriage of Geraint" and "Geraint and Enid" into one idyll. That leaves us with eight that fall into four sets of parallel Idylls. "Gareth and Lynette" matches "Pelleas and Ettarre," "Geraint and Enid" matches with "The Last Tournament," "Merlin and Vivian" with "Guinevere." That leaves us with "Balan and Balin" and "Lancelot and Elaine." Both idylls occur prior to "The Holy Grail," posing a problem for the idea of parallel structure. Both, however, share the common theme of innocents being hurt by the protagonist's inability to moderate their passions. We might accept "Lancelot and Elaine" as the pivot point to obviate this problem, but then there is the question of what to match with "The Holy Grail."

Parallels are so important to the individual poems that form "Idylls of the King" that it is tempting to try and find a parallel structure to the work. The nice bookends provided by "The Coming of Arthur" and "The Passing of Arthur" further support this expectation. Delving in to the other ten idylls, however, it is difficult to see a clear set of matches. This may due to the sporadic composition of the work. Though that may be the case, I'm not willing to give up yet. Above all else, Tennyson is a poet of style, and I don't believe that the poems of his masterwork were just "flung together."
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