ABSTRACT
Malory's Arthur is killed in early summer, eight weeks and a day after Easter Sunday. In the springtime of Arthur's realm, Tennyson's Vivien, seductress of Merlin and the femme fatale of the Idylls, prophesies that her ancient sun-worship, will rise again and beat the cross to earth, and break the King and all his Table. Much later, in the bleak winterscape of Arthur's passing, her prophecy is fulfilled. Tennyson more than once hints that Arthur is illusory, conjured into being by magicians like himself, just as Merlin, Arthur's architect and wizard, conjures Camelot into being. Bedivere's lament, like much else in Tennyson's 'The Passing of Arthur', finds its source in the final book of Malory's Morte DarthurIn a moment, a word about why Arthurian myth exerted so powerful a hold on Tennyson's imagination and on Victorian culture at large, but I still cannot quite let go of Bedivere.
