Critiquing a Medieval Warrior with a Muscular Christian: The Influence of Layamon's Brut on Tennyson's Idylls of the King

abstract: Tennyson's Idylls of the King draws on a range of Arthurian literature to craft a Victorian version of Britain's legendary king. While most scholarship has focused on the influence of Sir Thomas Malory's Morte D'Arthur , Layamon's Brut was also a crucial text in shaping Arthur's characterization. Tennyson utilizes the nineteenth-century concept of muscular Christianity as a modern response to the medieval warrior king in Brut . This in turn allows the poet to critique both the warrior of Brut and his own Arthur, whose triumphs and failures in Idylls of the King are presented through that framework. While vindictive violence was clearly unsuited to the modern era, Tennyson's Arthur models the difficulties of a Christian life lived according to the values of forgiveness and compassion.