SOURCE: Esheleman, Lloyd Wendell. ”Sigurd the Volsung and a Poetry Chair at Oxford.” In A Victorian Rebel: The Life of William Morris, pp. 128-33. New York: Octagon Books, 1971.

In the following excerpt, Esheleman asserts that Morris found echoes of his revolutionary sentiments in the Volsunga Saga.

In examining the basic ideas of Morris's literary works one finds that his observations regarding life, history and art are in distinct agreement with his views concerning the individual and society under varying historic conditions. One will note, too, that these views led him eventually to the cause of the people—to an attempt to repurify decadent modern civilization—and that the ideas which pervaded his earlier poetry were not lost sight of, but found a richer and fuller expression in the poetry and prose of his later years.

While he was reading and translating the old Norse literature he became much...