Shadowy People in a Realm of Dream: Glimpses of Arthurian Landscape in the Illustrated Idylls of the King

Abstract This paper investigates the construction and function of landscape in Alfred Tennyson’s Idylls of the King (1859–85), with particular attention to the poet’s symbolic use of space and its visual counterpart in Gustave Doré’s illustrations. Departing from previous Arthurian narratives that treat setting as a static backdrop, Tennyson transforms landscape into a dynamic, psychological mirror that externalises the internal conflicts of his characters and reflects the moral disintegration of Camelot. The poet employs the idyll form not merely for its structural utility but to stage moments of heightened introspection through painterly description. The resulting ‘geography of the mind’ reconfigures Arthurian space as simultaneously real and imagined, historical and mythical. This study also examines Doré’s visual interpretations, focusing on the techniques through which he interacts with – and at times even disrupts – Tennyson’s authorial voice. A close analysis of the dynamics between word and image reveals in fact how Doré’s illustrations, his use of chiaroscuro and sublime grandeur, do not simply reflect the poems but represent an alternative, at times competing, vision of the Arthurian myth, shaped by nineteenth-century visual culture and book production practices. Together, the poet’s verse and the artist’s intersemiotic translations offer a multilayered reflection on the Arthurian legends, Victorian identity, and the blurred boundaries between dream and reality, past and present.