Forming the Arthurian Idyll, 1688-1820

This thesis will investigate literary engagements with the Arthurian legends in the 'long' eighteenth century. There is an extensive body of scholarship on the nineteenth-century 'revival' of Arthurianism, especially with respect to Tennyson and Swinburne's poetry, Pre-Raphaelite Art, and more populist cultural forms. By contrast, the eighteenth century remains neglected, meaning that scholars of medievalism lack understanding of ways in which Georgian appropriations of Arthur enanabled the Victorians to rework Arthur, but were also distinctive from those later reworkings, responding to cultural concerns such as the Glorious Revolution and the Act of Union. In particular, my research will show that Arthur was conscripted in various ways across poetry, fiction, drama, and visual works to intervene in debates about historiography, gender, class, and national identity.