Description
Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) was fascinated by the Arthurian story throughout his career and some of his most important poetry recreates the legends from a modern perspective. Deeply influenced by Wagner and the German romantics, he reacted sharply against the ponderous preaching - as he perceived it to be - of the Tennysonian orthodoxy and created poetry of pure feeling. Tristram of Lyonesse, in particular, is a sustained celebration of the triumph of love over conventional morality - an evocation of Walter Pater's form of medievalism where religion shades into sensuous love and sensuous love into religion.
