Nov 19– “Morte D’Arthur” by Lord Alfred Tennyson (1912)
Summary: It takes Sir Bedivere three tries to chuck Excalibur back into the lake.
Commentary: I'm going to be honest, as soon as Bedivere showed up I lost the ability to take this poem seriously and just thought about Monty Python quotes.
It is a good poem though. Stuff happens, the poetic language is played up in places where it fits and down in places where it doesn't. And, as is hypothetically the point of this whole exercise, I learned something. When Arthur finally dies (he's not dead yet from a head wound for most of the poem) he's put on a boat with three queens. They are apparently (I think it comes from Malory) Morgan le Fay, an unnamed queen of Northgalis (Northern Wales), and maybe the Lady in the Lake or maybe a Queen of the Wastelands. I'm seeing both listed in various places, and the version of Malory I can find doesn't explicitly identify them.
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