We will now absolutely catapult through time--to the Victorian age, the nineteenth century. Alfred, Lord Tennyson and William Morris, along with their popular contemporaries, turned to Arthurian tradition for material, resurrectin g the theme after movements of Rationalist thought and Puritan social rule allowed it to remain inactive for centuries. "The Victorian Age" truly saw "a renaissance of Arthurian poetry" (Lupack 134). Tennyson wrote the Idylls of the king, including--of course--one entitled "Sir Lancelot and Queen Guen evere." The Idylls were extremely influential, inspiring many other works of art, such as "book illustrations, paintin gs, titles, and literary parodies" (134). More important to our purposes, "the 1859 Idylls gave women a central place in the Arthurian stories" (137).
It is Morris's poem, "The Defence of Guenevere" which considerably reshapes Guinevere's position in literary tradition. "Morris's poem let Guenevere speak for herself and in her own defense and thus is at the beginning of a tradit ion that extends to Parke Godwin's Beloved Exile (1980) and Wendy Mnookin's Guinevere Speaks (1991)" (137). For the first time, we hear about the big affair from Guinevere herself. She tells us that she "never intended to be treasonous, to undermine Art hur and his realm" (137). She tries to explain to knights that she never expected the "small decision" to be with Lancelot, which she made out of love, to become so "important." Through it all, there is an obvious sense of scorn in her voice for those w ho would judge her, as would Gawain, for she is a "proud woman" (137).
Such revisioning would become very popular in the next century. Unlike many liberal rewritings of her character which abound today--many of which de-emphasize or even omit her relationship with Lancelot--Morris's Guinevere is buil t around that affair. She speaks at her defining moment, when in the aftermath of her love, her triple roles as lover, wife and Britain's queen all come together to make her whole...and to ruin her.
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