Tennyson, Morris and the Guinevere Complex

The young Tennyson and the young Morris employ what Bachelard called ‘material imagination’ – a practice of imaginative penetration whereby consciousness projects itself into meaningful contact with the elements of physical reality – in order to convey the temptations of the early stages of life. Tennyson’s ‘Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere’ (1830), ‘Morte d’Arthur’ (1834), ‘Sir Galahad’ (1834), and Morris’s ‘The Defence of Guenevere’ (1858), ‘King Arthur’s Tomb’ (1858) and ‘Sir Galahad, A Christmas Mystery’ (1858) are imbued with what Roger Ebbatson terms ‘sensations of earth’ (Ebbatson, 2006, 63). Matter, which is composed of earth, water, fire and air, represents the substance in which Tennyson and Morris’s mediaeval reveries thrive. Everything becomes palpable in their poetical worlds when an object gives images of hesitation, temptation, and desire. This form of primitive practice takes form when desire-driven individuals interact with nature and its elements to an extent which makes them interdependent.