| The Once and Future King | |
|---|---|
1st edition |
|
| Author(s) | T. H. White |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy, Novel |
| Publisher | Collins |
| Publication date | 1958 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-441-00383-4 (paperback edition) |
| OCLC Number | 35661057 |
| Dewey Decimal | 823/.912 21 |
| LC Classification | PR6045.H2 O5 1996 |
The Once and Future King is an Arthurian fantasy novel written by T. H. White. It was first published in 1958 and is mostly a composite of earlier works written in a period between 1938 and 1941.
The title comes from the inscription that, according to Le Morte d'Arthur, was said by "many men" to be written upon King Arthur's tomb: the internally rhymed hexameter Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam, rexque futurus — "Here lies Arthur, king once, and king to be".[1]
Contents |
T. H. White uses The Once and Future King as his own personal view of the ideal society. The book, most of which "takes place on the isle of Gramarye," chronicles the raising and educating of King Arthur, his rule as a king, and the romance between his best knight Sir Lancelot and his Queen Guinevere (which he spells Guenever). It ends immediately before Arthur's final battle against his illegitimate son Mordred. Though White admits his book's source material is loosely derived from Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur (The Death of Arthur), he reinterprets the epic events, filling them with renewed meaning for a world enduring the Second World War.
The book is divided into 4 parts:
A final part called The Book of Merlyn (written 1941, published 1971) was published separately (ISBN 0-292-70769-X) following White's death. It chronicles Arthur's final lessons from Merlyn before his death, although some parts of it were incorporated into the final editions of the previous books.
An often quoted passage from the book is the story that the badger calls his "dissertation," a retelling of the Creation story from Genesis.
The story starts in the last years of the rule of king Uther Pendragon. The first part, The Sword in the Stone, chronicles Arthur's raising by his foster father Sir Ector, his rivalry and friendship with his foster brother Kay, and his initial training by Merlyn, a wizard who lives through time backwards. Merlyn, knowing the boy's destiny, teaches Arthur (known as "Wart") what it means to be a good king by turning him into various kinds of animals: fish, hawk, ant, goose, and badger. Each of the transformations is meant to teach Wart a lesson, which will prepare him for his future life.
In fact, Merlyn instills in Arthur the concept that the only justifiable reason for war is to prevent another from going to war, and that contemporary human governments and powerful people exemplify the worst aspects of the rule of Might.
Note that neither the ant nor goose episodes were in the original Sword in the Stone when it was published as a stand-alone book. The original novel also contains a battle between Merlyn and sorceress Madam Mim that was not included in The Once and Future King but that was included in the Disney film.
In part two, The Queen of Air and Darkness, White sets the stage for Arthur's demise by introducing the Orkney clan and detailing Arthur's seduction by their mother, his half-sister Morgause. While the young king suppresses initial rebellions, Merlyn leads him to envision a means of harnessing potentially destructive Might for the cause of Right: the Round Table.
The third part, The Ill-Made Knight, shifts focus from King Arthur to the story of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guenever's forbidden love, the means they go through to hide their affair from the King, and its effect on Elaine, Lancelot's sometime lover and the mother of his son Galahad.
The Candle in the Wind unites these narrative threads by telling how Mordred's hatred of his father and Agravaine's hatred of Sir Lancelot caused the eventual downfall of King Arthur, Queen Guenever, Sir Lancelot, and the entire ideal kingdom of Camelot.
The book begins as a quite light-hearted account of the young Arthur's adventures, Merlyn's incompetence at magic, and King Pellinore's interminable search for the Questing Beast. Parts of The Sword in the Stone read almost as a parody of the traditional Arthurian legend by virtue of White's prose style, which relies heavily on anachronisms. However, the tale gradually changes tone until Ill-Made Knight becomes more meditative and The Candle in the Wind finds Arthur brooding over death and his legacy.
Perhaps most striking about White's work is how he reinterprets the traditional Arthurian characters, often giving them motivations or traits more complex or even contradictory to those in earlier versions of the legend. For example:
White allows Thomas Malory to have a cameo appearance towards the end of the final book. Also of note is his treatment of historical characters and kings as mythological within the world that he creates. In addition, due to his living backwards, Merlyn makes many anachronistic allusions to events in more recent times; of note are references to the Second World War, telegraphs, tanks, and "an Austrian who … plunged the civilized world into misery and chaos" (i.e. Hitler).[2]
Fantasy historian Lin Carter wrote, "...the single finest fantasy novel written in our time, or for that matter, ever written, is, must be, by any conceivable standard, T. H. White's The Once and Future King. I can hardly imagine that any mature, literate person who has read the book would disagree with this estimate. White is a great writer."[3]
Although they initially purchased the film rights to The Ill-Made Knight in 1944,[4] when Walt Disney eventually produced an adaptation it was of The Sword in the Stone, released in 1963. This movie reflects more the sense of humour of Disney's team of animators than White's. The movie adds a more comical side to the original story, including song and dance, as in most Walt Disney films. Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's 1960 musical Camelot (which was made into a movie in 1967) is based mostly on the last two books of The Once and Future King, and features White's idea of having Thomas Malory make a cameo appearance at the end, again as "Tom of Warwick".