SOURCE: "Returning to 1859," in Man and His Myths: Tennyson's Idylls of the King in Critical Context, New York University Press, 1984, pp. 77-138.

In the essay that follows, Buckler examines some of the idylls as symbolic meditations on the literary enterprise.

One of the great advantages of coming to the 1859 idylls from a close consideration of the compositions that went into the Holy Grail volume is the deep reinforcement which the later volume gives to the critical perception that Idylls of the King is a literary artifact and that unfailing attention must be given to the whole poem and to its several parts as literary structures and procedures, to literature's way. And of the numerous and indispensable guidelines that the reader takes from the example of the Holy Grail volume, none is of greater aesthetic importance than that each idyll represents the projection into fable and language of a...