ABSTRACT
The Victorian interest in Arthurian legend persisted into the twentieth century, thanks to lingering Pre-Raphaelitism and an attachment to social and moral values expressed through the image of the medieval knight. Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur remained the chief source for writers and artists, but the Protestant ethic of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King also affected their treatments until the mid-century. The public’s obsession with the idea of the hero was stimulated by the outbreak of World War I to seek artistic expressions of valor and virility. In more than one public school the headmaster prepared students to become soldiers by reading from Malory. As the war’s horrible reality pierced the chivalric camouflage, the story of Arthur’s “noble knyghtes … layde to the colde erthe” seemed an appropriate myth for modern societies on the verge of destruction.
