ABSTRACT
Beginning with Tennyson's Arthur contemporaries, one of the targets for hostile criticism of Idylls of the King was his adaptation of the warrior king protagonist portrayed in Malory's Le Morte D'arthur. Tennyson's modern editor and interpreter Christopher Ricks makes no serious attempt to defend Tennyson against the traditional critics who ridicule the Poet Laureate for making Arthur a wimp, something less than a real man. On the other hand, more politically attuned critics taking a feminist or gender studies approach either ignore or deal inadequately with the question of Arthur's masculinity. The behavioral systems emphasized in 'Coming' are mating, kin relations, and social relations. His assumptions about manhood as a repudiation of 'natural bestiality' preclude his adoption of a model that would incorporate anything like Charles Kingsley's positive 'animal spirits' that inform 'both marital vigor and sexual potency' in men.
