Study notes for BEGC-133 Block 4 Unit 4. Covers the three major themes and symbols map diagram; Theme 1 — Change and the Courage to Accept It (Arthur's "The old order changeth yielding place to new" as acceptance of mortality, Bedivere's lament "the true old times are dead," the parallel with Tennyson accepting Hallam's death, comparison with In Memoriam "tis better to have loved and lost," the Victorian struggle between faith and science reflected in courage to move forward); Theme 2 — Morality and Faith (Arthur's prayer speech "More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of," men no better than sheep or goats without prayer, the whole round earth bound by gold chains about the feet of God, faith as Victorian response to Darwin's agnosticism); Theme 3 — Loyalty and Obedience (Bedivere's thrice-tested loyalty, his rationalisations as self-deception, true loyalty requiring obedience even at personal cost, Tennyson's call to Victorian allegiance to the monarch); symbols and their significance: Excalibur (Arthur's virtue and spiritual power, must return to divine source, beauty of hilt as Victorian temptation to cling to the glorious past), the Round Table (democratic fellowship with no head, code of chivalry, comparison with Last Supper table, its dissolution as end of a civilisation), Avilion the barge and the three Queens (paradise island, dark funeral barge crossing life/death boundary, supernatural Queens suggesting divine care, biblical resurrection resonances, hope of immortality and return); character portraits of King Arthur (dignity in dying, commanding, spiritual testament, ideal manhood) and Sir Bedivere (human fallible finally loyal, Tennyson's own grief for Hallam, "going forth companionless"); and all 4 unit-end questions with full answers including the In Memoriam comparison and the Queen Victoria allegory. Free PDF download.
This final unit brings together the poem's deepest meanings. We identify the three central themes, explain the symbols — Excalibur, the Round Table, Avilion — and look closely at how Tennyson, through the medieval legend of Arthur, speaks to the concerns of the Victorian age and to his own personal grief.
The most important theme of "Morte d'Arthur" is the acceptance of mortality and change. Arthur's death marks not just the end of one man's life but the end of an entire era — the era of the Round Table, of chivalry, of ideal governance, of the golden age of Camelot. As Bedivere cries: "the whole Round Table is dissolved / Which was an image of the mighty world."
Arthur's answer is the poem's central message:
This theme is also Tennyson's personal response to Hallam's death. For twenty years Tennyson grieved. Then, through "Morte d'Arthur" and In Memoriam, he arrived at acceptance: "'Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all." The poem demonstrates that grief can be transcended — not by forgetting, but by finding courage to live in the new order that follows loss.
The poem is deeply concerned with the relationship between morality, faith and prayer. Arthur's last speech is essentially a sermon:
This is Tennyson's direct response to the Victorian Conflict between science and faith. Darwin's theory had made many Victorians doubt whether God cared about individuals at all. Tennyson's Arthur — dying, wounded, losing everything — still affirms the power of prayer and the love of God. The poem is a Victorian act of faith, all the more powerful for being so hard-won.
The moral drama of Sir Bedivere's thrice-tested loyalty is the poem's dramatic engine. Bedivere fails Arthur twice — not from malice, but from an entirely human love for something beautiful and precious. His rationalisations are psychologically very realistic: he tells himself the King is sick; that future generations should see the sword; that a sick man does not know what he commands. Yet all these good-sounding reasons are ultimately a form of self-deception.
Arthur's response makes the theme explicit: "Thou hast betray'd thy nature and thy name, / Not rendering true answer, as beseem'd / Thy fealty, nor like a noble knight." True loyalty means obedience even when it costs you something dear. This is Tennyson's call to the Victorians: owe your loyalty to your queen and your faith, even when the modern age tempts you to rationalise abandoning them.
Excalibur is Arthur's magic sword, given to him by the Lady of the Lake at the beginning of his reign. It is the symbol of his virtue, authority and power. The sword has a magical potency only when wielded by a truly worthy warrior — it belongs to Arthur alone. At his death, it must be returned to the Lady of the Lake rather than passed to any successor, because no one could be worthy of it in the way Arthur was.
The beauty of the hilt — "diamond sparks, myriads of topaz-lights, and jacinth-work" — is also Tennyson's representation of the beauty of the ideals Arthur embodied: so beautiful that even his last loyal knight cannot bear to let them go. Bedivere hiding the sword is a symbol of the Victorian temptation to cling to the old glorious past rather than accept the new order. Arthur insisting it be returned is the acceptance that even the finest things of the past must be relinquished so that a new order can begin.
Tennyson also associates Excalibur with spiritual power. When the arm catches it from the lake, the scene is miraculous — it suggests that Arthur's virtues are not lost but returned to their divine source, just as Arthur himself is taken to Avilion.
The Round Table's dissolution is the symbol of the collapse of the entire chivalric order. When Bedivere says "the whole Round Table is dissolved / Which was an image of the mighty world," he is saying that the greatest democratic and chivalric institution the world had known is gone. The Round Table was not just a table — it was an embodiment of the ideal of just, equal, loyal governance. Its dissolution signals the end of an era.
For Tennyson, the Round Table also allegorises Victoria's empire. Just as Arthur brought different knights of equal standing together under one ideal, Victoria's empire brought together different peoples under one monarch. The allegory worked both ways: the Arthurian ideal could inspire the Victorian present; and the Victorian present gave new life to the Arthurian legend.
Avilion (Avalon) is the paradise island where Arthur is taken to be healed. Tennyson describes it in sensuous, peaceful terms: "Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard-lawns / And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea." It is a place of eternal summer, no storms, no cold — the perfect antithesis of the winter battlefield where the poem begins.
The barge is dark and mysterious — "dark as a funeral scarf" — suggesting the boundary between life and death. The three Queens with gold crowns who mourn and tend Arthur suggest divine, supernatural care. Together, this scene carries the hope of immortality: Arthur does not simply die — he passes to a higher state. The image has biblical resonances (the women mourning at the tomb of Christ), suggesting resurrection and the possibility of return.
Arthur's famous words — "I am going a long way... to the island-valley of Avilion / Where I will heal me of my grievous wound" — are the poem's offer of hope after grief. Just as Tennyson believed Hallam lived on in a spiritual realm, he gives Arthur a destination beyond death. The future is not darkness but healing.
King Arthur is presented as a man of supreme dignity even in dying. He commands; he rebukes; he instructs; he forgives; he blesses. His courage in facing death is described almost like a king going to a throne rather than a grave. He is patient with Bedivere's failures ("Yet for a man may fail in duty twice, / And the third time may prosper") — which reveals both his authority and his compassion. His last speech is a poem within the poem — a profound spiritual testament.
Sir Bedivere is the poem's human centre. He is entirely sympathetic: his love for Excalibur, his grief at losing Arthur, his desperate lament — all of these are emotions any reader can recognise. His two failures are not villainous but deeply human. His eventual obedience (closing his eyes to avoid temptation) is a quiet heroism. His final desolation — "I go forth companionless / And the days darken round me, and the years, / Among new men, strange faces, other minds" — is one of the most moving passages in Victorian poetry.
| Term | Simple meaning |
|---|---|
| Allegory | A narrative in which characters, events and settings carry deeper symbolic meanings beyond their literal sense. |
| Mortality | The state of being subject to death; the fact that all human life must end. |
| Impermanence | The quality of not lasting forever — the central fact Arthur asks Bedivere to accept. |
| Chivalry | The medieval code of honour: bravery, loyalty, courtesy and protection of the weak. |
| Equanimity | Calm acceptance and mental steadiness in the face of difficulty or death — the quality Arthur displays. |
| Valedictory | Serving as a farewell — Arthur's last speech is a valedictory address. |
| Eviscerate | To remove the vital core of something — betrayal eviscerated the Round Table's ideals. |
| Transpose | To transfer something from one context to another — Tennyson transposes the medieval legend onto the Victorian age. |
All four unit-end questions, answered in clear and simple language for your exam.
Tennyson's poem highlights four core medieval values — loyalty, obedience, chivalry, and faith — and deliberately transposes them onto his Victorian present.
Loyalty. The medieval knight's supreme virtue was loyalty to his lord. The poem's entire dramatic action tests Bedivere's loyalty: three times Arthur commands him; twice he fails; finally he obeys. The moral is clear — true loyalty obeys even at personal cost. Tennyson was calling the Victorians to owe the same loyalty to their queen and their nation. Bedivere's loyalty to a dying, powerless king is a model for devotion that transcends practical utility.
Chivalry and obedience. The code of chivalry demanded that knights serve their lord faithfully, protect the weak, and maintain personal honour. Bedivere's internal conflict — torn between the sword's beauty and his duty — dramatises the difficulty of living up to the chivalric ideal. Arthur's rebuke ("traitor-hearted… unknightly") uses the language of chivalry directly: not being loyal is not just disobedience but a failure of knighthood.
Faith. Arthur's final speech is an extended affirmation of Christian prayer: "More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of." This was the central medieval virtue — absolute faith in God's providence. Tennyson was using the medieval example to encourage Victorians who were losing their faith in the age of Darwin and industrial materialism.
How Tennyson relates them to the Victorian age. He places the medieval story within a Victorian frame ("The Epic"), showing modern people with their doubts listening to the ancient story and having their faith restored. He models Arthur on Prince Albert and Queen Victoria. And he uses Arthur's last words — "The old order changeth, yielding place to new" — to show that the Victorian age, too, is a moment of transition that calls for the same courage, loyalty and faith that the Arthurian age demanded.
The central theme of "Morte d'Arthur" is the acceptance of mortality and the courage to embrace change — the idea that the end of one order is always the beginning of another, and that faith in God sustains us through the transition.
This theme is beautifully illuminated by comparing it with Tennyson's other great poem on grief and loss, In Memoriam A.H.H. (1850).
The parallel starting point. Both poems begin with overwhelming grief. "Morte d'Arthur" opens after the destruction of everything Arthur built; King Arthur is mortally wounded and Bedivere faces a world stripped of everything he valued. In Memoriam begins with similar desolation — it opens seventeen years after Hallam's death, and though the grief has softened with time, the poem moves through doubt, anger, despair, and searching in ways that clearly reflect Tennyson's own devastation.
The parallel resolution. Both poems move from grief toward acceptance and faith. In "Morte d'Arthur," the resolution is Arthur's speech: "The old order changeth, yielding place to new… More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of." Change is not the end; it is God's way. In In Memoriam, the resolution is the famous affirmation: "'Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all." Both poems arrive at the same Victorian answer: grief can be endured; love and faith survive death; the future holds hope.
The personal dimension. Arthur's death in the poem is Hallam's death, and Bedivere's desolation is Tennyson's. When Bedivere cries "where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes? / For now I see the true old times are dead," this is Tennyson speaking directly from his grief. And Arthur's last words are the courage Tennyson had to find for himself: to accept change, to move on, to pray, to let what will be, be.
Tennyson uses the figure of King Arthur as an elaborate, flattering parallel to Queen Victoria, creating an allegorical tribute to his monarch while appearing to tell an ancient medieval story.
Arthur modelled on Albert. Arthur in the poem and in the Idylls is described as "ideal manhood closed in real man" and the "stainless gentleman" — someone who is modest, wise, just, and blameless. These qualities were publicly attributed to Prince Albert, Victoria's consort. The "Dedication" to the Idylls praises Albert explicitly, and it was widely understood that the Arthur of the poem was modelled on Albert. By making Arthur the embodiment of ideal manhood and ideal kingship, Tennyson was praising Albert and, through him, Victoria.
The allegorical parallel. King Arthur presided over the great age of Camelot — an era of order, chivalry, justice and expansion. Queen Victoria presided over the great age of the British Empire — an era of industrial progress, imperial expansion, and (by Victorian consensus) moral order. Tennyson's poem draws this parallel explicitly: Victoria, like Arthur, is associated with the glory of England and an age celebrated as one of the nation's greatest periods.
The ideal of loyalty. Bedivere's loyalty to a dying king — serving him to the end, bearing him to the lake, standing watch until the barge disappears — is a model of the loyalty Tennyson hoped the Victorians would show to their own monarch. By making this loyalty noble and heroic, Tennyson glorifies the relationship between sovereign and subject.
The immortality wish. Arthur does not permanently die — he is taken to Avilion to be healed and will return. Tennyson ends the Idylls of the King with a poem "To the Queen" that praises Victoria and expresses the wish that, like Arthur, she will be remembered and celebrated long after her reign. The immortality Tennyson confers on Arthur is the immortality he wishes for Victoria's legacy.
King Arthur is introduced at the moment of his ultimate defeat — mortally wounded, carried by the last of his knights, all his dreams and ideals destroyed. Yet he remains, in every line, a king. His demeanour is commanding and dignified. He does not beg for sympathy or rail against his fate; instead he gives orders, rebukes Bedivere's dishonesty, and prepares philosophically for death. His courage is quiet and absolute: "but let what will be, be."
Arthur knows he is dying but does not panic. He cares for others even in extremity — he worries not just about his sword but about Bedivere's future: "Comfort thyself." His final speech is a spiritual testament about prayer, change, and faith in God that rises far above the personal. He is, as Tennyson says, "ideal manhood closed in real man" — not a plaster saint but a real man facing the worst, who responds with everything his code requires of him.
Sir Bedivere is the poem's human heart — fallible, loving, and eventually noble. He is Arthur's last knight, the only one who survived the final battle, and his loyalty to Arthur is genuine and deep. Yet he fails Arthur twice when faced with the temptation of Excalibur's beauty. His failure is entirely understandable — the sword is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen; it is the last relic of Arthur's glory; it seems monstrous to throw it away. But his rationalisation is a form of self-deception, and Arthur sees through it at once.
On the third attempt Bedivere closes his eyes and obeys. His obedience is a moral victory. His final lament — left alone, "going forth companionless" among "new men, strange faces, other minds" — is the most emotionally powerful passage in the poem. He represents every person who has been left behind when a world they loved comes to an end. Bedivere is Tennyson himself, grieving for Hallam; and he is every Victorian grieving for the certainties of the past. His grief is real; his loyalty is real; and his loneliness at the end is, in its way, heroic.
End of Unit 4 · End of Block 4: Alfred Tennyson — "Morte d'Arthur"
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