Alfred Tennyson
Can someone please summarize Alfred tennyson’s “Merlin and Vivien” from idylls of the King for me please?
I do not understand all that old english very well. Can you please summarize what is going on and the main plot ? Thanks
Vivien, according to Tennyson, is a rather loose woman at the court of King Mark in Cornwall whose parents died in war against Arthur. Vivien mocks the supposed purity of Arthur’s court, suspecting that the supposed pure love of Lancelot and the Queen is in fact an adulterous relationship. She goes to Camelot to seek out the corruption.
She lies herself into the position of being a lady of the court and spreads her gossip among the ladies at court at a time when the court has no external enemies and so people have time for her gossip and tales, whether they be true or not.
She then sets out to seduce Merlin.
Merlin should know better, but he becomes infatuated with Vivien. He sees through some of her tricks, but accepts them as normal girlish immaturity. Merlin tolerates her and gradually becomes used to her. Then, perceiving through his magic that some evil is coming upon him, he becomes entranced and, not knowing what he is doing, crosses the sea in a boat, landing in Little Britain, where he enters the forest of Broceliande. Vivien follows him. Merlin eventually sits down by a hollow oak in the forest of Broceliande. Vivien plays with him and her jesting breaks the trance. Merlin perceives that Vivien may be the menace that he has foreseen but persuades himself that, in his trance, he had seen Vivien following him and wrongly confused her with the menace.
Vivien, pretending to be totally in love with Merlin, asks to be taught a charm by which she may create an invisible tower and imprison a man therein. Merlin does not trust her. But Vivien continues to work on him. She, somewhat unwisely perhaps, gossips about Arthur’s knights. But for every tale that Vivien tells against a knight Merlin knows and tells what really occurred, that the knight is innocent, except in the case of Lancelot who indeed is having a physical love affair with the Queen. So Vivien continues her attempt to make out that Arthur and all his court are hypocrites.
Merlin then suspects Vivien. But he lets his suspicions show, muttering the word “harlot”. Vivien now claims that she was wrongly attempting to darken king and court to make Merlin, her true love, seem to shine brighter. But she will now have nothing to do with Merlin, unless he will show that he trusts her by giving her the charm and that if she means any harm by it, may lightning strike her.
At once a bolt of lightning strikes nearby and it begins to pour rain. Vivien, in a mixture of pretended fear and real fear throws herself onto Merlin and asks for his protection. Merlin eventually, tells Vivien the charm and falls asleep. Vivien then uses the charm against Merlin, imprisoning him forever in the hollow oak.
This is Tennyson’s version of the imprisonment of Merlin. In the accounts in genuine medieval tales Merlin is imprisoned in a cave or in an invisible tower by the Lady of the Lake, and it is Merlin who is the aggressor, not the Lady of the Lake who is attempting to free herself of Merlin. One of the names given to the Lady of the Lake in some texts is Vivien. Tennyson makes his Vivien a different person from the Lady of the Lake and makes her the aggressor in the affair.
Some modern novelists follow Tennyson’s version.
In the medieval tales Merlin is indeed the son of a devil or demon of some kind. Tennyson makes this tale to be a false one told of Merlin by those who envy him.
Tithonus by Alfred Tennyson
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