Where It All Goes Down
Medieval Britain; Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall
The Idylls of the King are set in medieval Britain. But before you get into your DeLorean, remember we're talking about the Victorian idea of medieval Britain.
Arthur’s Camelot, for example, is a “city of shadowy palaces / And stately,” everywhere “tipt with lessening peak / and pinnacle” and full of “long-vaulted” halls, rather than the close and defensively-oriented feudal fortress of a historical medieval town (“Gareth and Lynette,” 296-297, 301-302, 312).
Though we’re in the world of Arthurian romance, this world is not the one you’ll find in romances actually written during the medieval period, like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. For one thing, there are few, if any, magical beasts and supernatural creatures here. Even when the supernatural makes an appearance, it’s more often in the abstract context of competing versions of reality—dream visions, madness, superstition—than as a concrete part of the plot.
A King for All Seasons
The weather in the Idylls follows the course of the seasons over one year. Arthur’s birth occurs on “the night of the new year” in the dead of winter (“Coming,” 208), and the Idylls quickly transition into spring as Arthur’s knights flourish like so many flowers. Gareth makes his flight from his mother’s custody in a “showerful spring”(2).
The action of “The Marriage of Geraint” and “Geraint and Enid” occurs at the height of summer, as threshers bring in the hay. A spectacular late summer storm suffuses the setting of “Merlin and Vivien,” and Elaine’s brothers lay out her funeral barge in the light of “full-summer” (1134). The shift of seasons continues as characters in “Pelleas and Ettarre” wander through autumn fields being planted and “The Last Tournament” concludes with a “death-dumb autumn-dripping gloom” (750).
Finally, in “The Passing of Arthur,” Arthur fights his last battle “among the mountains by a winter sea” plagued with rolling mist and chilly winds (171). The passing of the seasons mirrors the passing of Arthur’s realm. As Arthur tells the Roman lords, “the old order changeth, yielding place to new” (“Coming,” 508), and the poem uses the changing seasons to mark this cycle.