The King of Camelot

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Cover of the first edition from 1958

The King on Camelot (The Once and Future King) is an initially four-part novel by the English writer TH White from 1958, which was followed by a previously unpublished fifth part after the author's death. It tells the story of the legendary King Arthur from his childhood through his days as king of medieval England until shortly before his death in battle. TH White is inspired in his narrative by Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur , but he complements the narrative with parodic elements and a psychologically comprehensive representation of his characters. The King on Camelot is considered a classic in fantasy literature.

content

The King of Camelot is divided into four volumes, with the first volume ( The Sword in the Stone ) describing Arthur's youth up to his coronation and the second volume ( The Queen of Air and Water ) primarily his way of establishing his power and the Foundation of the Round Table . The third volume ( The failed knight ) focuses on the fate of Sir Lancelot and at the same time describes the experiences of the knights of the round table in search of the Holy Grail . The fourth volume ( The Candle in the Wind ) revolves around the decline of Arthur's power and the collapse of the Round Table. Publication of the fifth volume ( Das Buch Merlin ) was initially rejected by the publishers, as paper was scarce due to the Second World War and the style, which differs greatly from the first volumes, was viewed as problematic. It was first published in 1977, in German in 1980.

The sword in the stone

The sword in the stone, Disneyland Hong Kong

The book begins with an introduction by young Arthur, nicknamed The Wart . Wart grows up as the alleged orphan and foster child of Sir Ector in " The Castle of the Forest Sauvage" , together with Sir Ector's son Kay . As a foster child, Wart always has to put up with Kay, whose future as a knight in the Kingdom of England is clearly mapped out, while Wart, as a foster child of unknown origin, is likely to work as Kay's squire. This situation changes when one day, while hunting for a falcon, Wart meets the druid Merlin , a bizarre old wizard with a dead mouse under his skullcap and the entire Encyclopædia Britannica on his bookshelf. Merlin lives against the flow of time, i.e. H. from the future to the past, so that he already knows Wart's future.

Merlin is allowed to take care of Wart's upbringing and moves into Sir Ector's castle. Merlin's upbringing for Wart mainly consists of transforming the boy into different animals: a perch , an ant , a pygmy falcon , a wild goose and a badger . During each of these transformations, Wart learns something about power, forms of rule and society, and the fact that most animals know no war.

In addition to the lessons with Merlin, Wart experienced a relatively carefree childhood with many adventures in the wooded area around the castle. He met Robin Hood , among others , who lives under the name Robin Wood with his men as an outlaw in the wild forest at White. Wart also meets King Pellinore, who has dedicated his life to an absurd hunt for a terrible monster, the beast Glatisant .

Wart's fate takes a decisive turn when he accompanies Sir Ector and Kay to a jousting tournament in London : there is a sword in a stone in a square in front of a church, the inscription on which says that only the rightful next king of England will be who is able to pull the sword out of the stone. So far, however, no knight has succeeded in doing this. When Kay misses his sword during the tournament and Waits to get it, he accidentally passes the sword in the stone and pulls the sword out of the stone to bring it to Kay as a replacement for his missing sword. When Wart's family and Merlin notice that Wart brought the sword in the stone, Wart's origins and future become apparent: Wart is Arthur , son of the late King Uther Pendragon and is said to be the rightful birthright king of all of Gramarye (White's mythological version of Britain ) to rule.

The queen of air and darkness

The second volume begins on the Orkney archipelago , where Queen Morgause lives with her children Gawaine , Agravaine, Gaheris and Gareth and is waiting for news from her husband, King Lot, who is at war with King Arthur. After his accession to the throne, Arthur first has to defend his claim to the throne, because especially kings in the north of Britain (the Gael ) do not recognize his sovereignty and went into battle against him, while other kings of Britain (especially the Anglonormans , von White also called Gauls) support Arthur.

The plot alternates between the Orkneys, where King Pellinore and his friends arrive, and King Arthur's tent as he prepares for the decisive battle against the Gael. Arthur hopes that when the war against the Gael ends he can pacify his country and adopt a fundamentally different style of government: justice before violence. In the discussion with Merlin and his friends, Arthur mentions for the first time his idea of ​​a round table, the members of which are all equal and which should fight for law and justice.

On the Orkneys, King Pellinore and his friends, Sir Grummore and Sir Palomides, have no inkling that King Lot and Queen Morgause are at war with King Arthur. White describes a number of absurd "adventures" that they experience. King Pellinore is lovesick because he got lost on his hunt for the beast in Flanders and fell in love with Princess Piggy. When he gets on a magical barge , however, he and his friends are taken away from it and taken to the Orkneys. To distract him from his lovesickness, his friends dress up as the beast, which in turn leads to the beast falling in love with their disguised form. The series of humorous misadventures of the knights ends with the arrival of Piggy, whom King Pellinore has tracked down. Merlin finally appears briefly and advises them to cure the infatuation of the beast through psychoanalysis . However, this does not succeed, but the beast falls in love with Sir Palomides, who now takes on the task of hunting the beast instead of King Pellinore.

The book ends with Arthur's victory over the Gael and a wedding in London. King Arthur hosts a grand wedding reception for King Pellinore, one of his first chivalrous friends from his youth, and for Piggy. Queen Morgause and her children also arrive for this wedding. The book ends with a first misunderstanding: Morgause works with magic to seduce Arthur, who doesn't know that Morgause is his half-sister, because they are both children of Igraine of Cornwall, who was first married to Morgause's father and was married to her second Uther Pendragon, Arthur's father, was married. A child, Mordred , emerges from the connection between Morgause and Arthur , who later turns out to be the cause of the downfall of the Round Table.

The bad knight

The third volume of The King of Camelot describes the events primarily from the perspective of the young, misshapen knight Lancelot, who despite the fact that he becomes the best knight of the round table (and in the course of the story the best knight in the world), sees himself as a failed knight ( chevalier mal fet ) and also acts under this name for a time.

Lanzelot, son of a French aristocratic family, spends his youth training to be the “best knight in the world” so that he can join the round table at Arthur's Camelot Castle . The purpose of this knightly order is to replace the “right of the strong arm” with a justice that does not serve the mighty, but rather those who are actually right. When he finally travels to England accompanied by his uncle Dam, he has his first successful real jostle against King Arthur, who only reveals himself after the fight and invites him to his round table. At court, Lancelot meets Ginevra , whom Arthur has meanwhile married. Ginevra, daughter of King Leodegrance , has entered into a marriage of convenience with Arthur, mediated by Merlin and her father, who bequeathed Arthur a large, round table as a wedding gift, which will be used for the Knights of the Round Table.

When Ginevra and Lancelot fall in love, Lancelot tries to avoid the conflict between his love for Ginevra and his loyalty and friendship with King Arthur: brought into conflict with his knightly code of honor, he goes on a longer quest on which he has many There is a fight for law and justice. Among other things, he frees a virgin who is trapped by a spell in a boiling hot bath. This virgin, Elaine , falls so deeply in love with him that she resorted to a trick to make love to him. Lancelot, outraged by the deception, leaves the castle of her father, King Pelles, without finding out that Elaine is giving birth to a son, Galahad , by him.

When Arthur moves to France and asks Lancelot to stay with Ginevra at court, Ginevra and Lanzelot begin their long-term affair, which Arthur apparently goes unnoticed even after his return. A crisis comes when Elaine shows up at court with her child in the hope of winning Lancelot over. Launcelot, torn between love for Ginevra, obligations to Elaine and loyalty to Arthur, goes insane, disappears from the farm and spends years wandering as a "wild man" before he is found, recognized and nursed back to health by Elaine. Lancelot leaves Elaine after a while and returns to the court of King Arthur and to his love Ginevra.

At the court of King Arthur, after the nationwide establishment of justice, great competition has broken out between the knights as to who will be the best among them - much to the sadness of King Arthur, who saw the knights as an association of equals. In order to distract the knights of the Round Table from conflicts and outbreaks of violence and to give them a new target, he calls out the search for the Holy Grail, after which most knights go out for years, including Lancelot. The search for the Holy Grail finally ends with Lancelot's now adult son, Galahad, as well as the knights Sir Bors and Sir Percivale find the Grail, but cannot return and also cannot bring the Grail to England. About half of the knights of the Round Table, however, are killed in search of the Grail, Lancelot returns as one of the last knights and reports how he could watch Galahad, Bors and Percival from afar as they find the Grail.

Despite all the secrecy, rumors linger that Ginevra and Lancelot are having an affair. Lancelot manages to save Queen Ginevra's honor twice by fighting for her in the tournament. He does not want to return to Elaine, whereupon Elaine commits suicide, since she has now lost both her great love and her son Galahad.

Because he has lost his innocence to Elaine and is cheating on his king with the queen, Launcelot has now lost hope of being considered the best knight in the world and of performing a miracle, one of his greatest wishes. The book ends with an episode that proves Lancelot otherwise: he succeeds in healing the knight Sir Urre from Hungary, who is struck with eternally bleeding wounds due to a curse and can only be healed by the best knight in the world.

The candle in the wind

In the fourth part a royal court in a state of decadence is described to the reader . King Arthur, Ginevra and his first generation of Knights of the Round Table are getting on in years. The struggle for justice has long since ended, the Holy Grail has been found and the court surrenders to fashions and pastimes. The end of the Round Table begins with Agravaines and Mordred's plan to bring Arthur down by officially accusing Lancelot and Ginevra of adultery and treason. At the same time Arthur Lancelot and Ginevra confesses his incest with his half-sister Morgause, from whom his son Mordred emerged. Because his advisors warned him that Mordred would one day be his downfall, Arthur ordered all children his age to be killed. Mordred survived, however, and Arthur has since lived with the guilt for the deaths of the other children killed. The reader learns that Mordred knows about it and hates Arthur for it.

Although their brothers Gawaine, Gaheris and Gareth try to dissuade them, Agravaine and Mordred carry out their plan to prosecute Lancelot and Ginevra. Arthur is forced to follow his own principles of law and justice and investigate the charge. When Mordred and Agravaine try to catch them red-handed, Agravaine is killed by Lancelot, who then fled.

This sets in motion a chain of unfortunate events: Ginevra is sentenced to death by burning, but is saved at the last second by Lancelot, where he kills the Orkney brothers Gareth and Gaheris in the fray. Gawaine and Mordred then demand vengeance on Lancelot, whereupon the latter and Ginevra, who have saved themselves in a castle of Lancelot, which are besieged by the king's troops. The siege ends after mediation by the church with Ginevra's acquittal and Lancelot's banishment to France. When Arthur moves to France with Gawaine to fight Lancelot and his troops, he leaves Ginevra under the protection of his son Mordred, who is supposed to rule England as protector in the absence of Arthur. Mordred, however, declares Arthur and Gawaine dead, rises himself to be King of England and wants to marry Queen Ginevra, who evades this by taking refuge in the Tower . She manages to send another message to Arthur.

Arthur then withdraws from the siege of Lancelot's castle and returns to England, where he wants to face a battle with Mordred. However, Gawaine dies beforehand, but not without reconciling himself with Launcelot beforehand, because he has realized that Mordred is a traitor. The book ends with Arthur on the eve of the battle, on which Arthur ponders what causes wars and violence and why his idea of ​​a round table failed. However, he succeeds in passing on the ideal of a knighthood of the Round Table to posterity by telling his story to a page, the boy Thomas of Warwick, whom the reader can recognize as Thomas Malory , and asking him not to take part in the battle, but ride home to Warwickshire. There he is supposed to keep Arthur's idea of ​​a knighthood "like a candle in the wind" and tell it more so that it is preserved for posterity.

The book of Merlin

Volume five begins where volume four ended: on the eve of battle. Suddenly Merlin appears in Arthur's tent. He informs him that his training is incomplete and that the missing lessons must now be made up. He then introduces Arthur to the animals he met during the metamorphoses in his youth, and performs two more metamorphoses to show him the importance of the war ahead and wars in general. The king, plagued by old age and tiredness, despairs at first because of his insights, but is then motivated by the particularly intellectually simple hedgehog to take on his responsibility in the coming battle. He negotiates a truce with Mordred to prevent the bloodshed. By a stupid coincidence the fight breaks out anyway. In the following the further fate of the main characters is briefly addressed: Ginevra and later also Lancelot end their lives in the monastery. The last remaining knights of the Round Table die on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land . The fate of Mordred and Arthur remains unknown. Numerous theories and legends arise about Arthur's whereabouts. White describes various presumed tombs and tells of legends that tell of the king's continued life over several centuries and the story that one or more priestesses brought him to the mythical island of Affalach .

The German edition of the book Merlin closes with the essays Merlin. Portrait of a Magician and About Terence Hanbury White by Frederik Hetmann .

shape

Reference to Malory's Le Morte Darthur

The King on Camelot is inspired by Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur , and Malory's story is repeatedly referred to in the novel. In the last volume, The Candle in the Wind , Thomas Malory even has a cameo appearance as a page who is supposed to carry Arthur's idea of ​​the round table. White's novel, however, is more than a mere retelling of the Arthurian legend after Malory, but takes the position of an independent commentator on many topics. White also doesn't adopt Malory's attitudes, e.g. B. the medieval, chivalrously shaped perspective on war, rather White's perspective is strongly influenced by events of the 20th century, especially the Second World War.

subjects

As a red thread the intention Arthur runs through the narrative to curb violence in his country. First of all, inspired by Merlin's pacifist upbringing, he founds his order of knights (the Round Table ) with the aim of replacing the right of the strongest ( Force majeur ) with a rule of justice. When this is largely enforced, he needs employment for his knights, who are trained fighters. He comes up with the solution to give his order a spiritual goal, the search for the Holy Grail. When this is finally found, the knighthood degenerates into courtly behavior.

The King on Camelot deals primarily in the first volume with the role of education, but also increasingly with the question of war, justice, power and law. When Arthur becomes king, his establishment of the Round Table is an attempt to replace the sheer power of knights with a chivalrous ideal of justice. Allusions to the nationalism and fascism of the 1930s and 1940s can also be found, especially in the portrayal of Mordred and his supporters. The fourth volume, The Candle in the Wind , ends with old King Arthur's brooding about the causes of the war and why his idea of ​​a round table had to fail. Since the king instructs his page, Thomas Malory, to carry on the idea of ​​the ideal knighthood, the book ends on a hopeful note despite the imminent probable death of Arthur.

Stylistic peculiarities

Formally, the change in style is noticeable in the course of the story. The portrayal of Arthur's youth is more carefree and comic than the later dark and tragic events. Again and again, anachronisms on the one hand by the omniscient narrator is planning, but also in content, if such find in Merlin dwelling Sammelbilder packets of cigarettes, or Mordred the establishment of a knight troops clad in black and identification ( Swastika ) on the Schutzstaffel the Nazis alludes .

There are always allusions to later literary processing of the Arthurian myth, in volume five even to the present adaptation by TH White himself.

Humor and irony

White inserts a number of elements into his novel that are not found in Malory: On the one hand, the many humorous and ironic passages in which chivalry and virtue are parodied are striking. One of the first knights that Wart met is King Pellinore, who can barely see due to his glasses and an impractical visor and later even falls from his horse.

Pellinore's search for the beast is also the basis for many comical interludes, such as the disguise of Sir Grummore and Sir Palomides as the beast, where they constantly struggle with their disguise, can only move slowly and finally followed by the actual beast become. The comic episodes also make Arthurian material accessible to younger readers.

The fact that Merlin lives backwards, i.e. is getting younger and younger and already knows the future of the people around him, leads to strange situations. So Merlin uses many anachronisms, e.g. B. recommends that King Pellinore and his friends cure the beast of his infatuation through psychoanalysis.

place and time

The novel is set in a fictional country called Gramarye , a name White gave to medieval England. Times in the novel indicate an action in the 11th or 12th century; Arthur is referred to as an Anglo-Norman in the tradition of William the Conqueror . White's chronological classification of his Arthurian story is in contrast to medieval historiography, which sees the (presumably legendary) King Arthur as a person of the 7th century, as a Celtic king at the time of the incursions of the Anglo-Saxons .

genre

The King on Camelot is often classified in literature as a fantasy novel and a popular retelling of the Arthurian legend after Thomas Malory. White's narration of the Arthurian legend goes beyond a mere retelling of Malory's material. In his novel, White comments on topics such as education, loyalty, love, war and European politics in the 1930s and 1940s.

The first volume in particular, The Sword in the Stone , is also seen as children's literature because of its humorous interludes and its subject matter (Arthur's childhood and upbringing). White himself was never sure whether The Sword in the Stone was a book for children or adults, but it didn't seem to matter to him either. Some literary critics such as Alan Lupack or Heather Worthington observe a progression of White's novels from a children's story in The Sword in the Stone to fiction for adults in the later volumes.

title

The title of White's novel The Once and Future King goes back to Malory's Le Morte Darthur , who describes the inscription on Arthur's grave as follows: Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam, rexque futurus or Here lies Arthur, king once, and king to be.

Position in literary history

Classification in the work of the author

The Once and Future King is based on novels by White, which were initially published as single volumes ( The Sword in the Stone , The Witch in the Wood , The Ill-Made Knight ) between 1939 and 1940. In 1958 the three previous books appeared together with a fourth part, The Candle in the Wind , as The Once and Future King . For this collective edition, White revised his first books and removed, among other things, the duel between Merlin and the witch Madame Mim . In the first publication of the second story, she was still Morgause's mother. The second volume, The Witch in the Wood , became The Queen of Air and Darkness .

The book Merlin , created in 1941 and planned as the final fifth part , was only published posthumously in 1977 . This part describes Merlin's last lessons for Arthur before Arthur's death and was not published by the publisher in 1942 because of its pacifist content, paper shortages due to the war and a stylistic break from the previous volumes. Portions of this book were incorporated into The Once and Future King by White in 1958 . Since the rights for the first parts are held by Klett-Cotta Verlag and the fifth by Eugen Diederichs , there is no German complete edition.

The Once and Future King was White's first literary and financial success. He had previously published literature in a variety of genres, including poetry, a historical novel, Farewell Victoria (1933), a detective story, Darkness at Pemberley (1932), and the autobiographical England Have My Bones (1936). Even after The Once and Future King, White did not remain committed to fantasy, but continued to publish novels of various genres as well as non-fiction about rural life.

Position in literary history

For the English readership, Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur , by which The King on Camelot is inspired, is the best known medieval tale of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. TH White's novel is seen in the tradition of authors who creatively reinterpret and retell the Arthurian subject of Thomas Malory. As further examples of a creative re-creation of the Arthurian legend are u. a. Alfred Tennyson's Idylls of the King (1885) and John Steinbeck's The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (1976). The boom in fantasy literature based on the Arthurian legend such as Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon or Mary Stewart's Merlin tetralogy is also of interest to literary research .

reception

The New York Times described the novel as “a glorious dream of the Middle Ages as it never was, but as it should have been”, and the British Sunday Times judged White's book: “brilliant and tragic, an irresistible mixture of happiness and pathos ". Ute Blaich ( Deutsches Allgemeine Sonntagsblatt ) wrote: “From ancient Celtic fairy tales and legends, the dream, magic and fascination of King Arthur, knight of the round table, grew over centuries. TH White made the historical accusation the subject of a completely unpathetic heroic story, a piece of masterful modern fantasy literature. ”Fantasy expert Lin Carter described The Once and Future King 1973 as the best fantasy novel of its time.

In 2014, the first volume, The Sword in the Stone , published in 1938, received the Retro Hugo Award for best novel.

Adaptation as audio book, film and musical

White's novel served & a. as a template for the Walt Disney film The Witch and the Magician as well as for the musical Camelot and the film Camelot - At the court of King Arthur based on it . There is an audio book version of the German version, Der König auf Camelot , read by Jochen Malmsheimer .

literature

Original edition

  • TH White: The Once and Future King . Fontana / William Collins Sons, Glasgow 1958. (Collective edition of Volumes 1–4)

Original editions of the original single volumes

  • TH White: The Sword in the Stone . Collins, London 1938 / Putnam's Sons, New York 1939.
  • TH White: The Witch in the Wood . Collins, London 1940 / Putnam's Sons, New York 1939.
  • TH White: The Ill-Made Knight . Collins, London 1941 / Putnam's Sons, New York 1940.

Original edition of the sequel (Volume 5)

  • TH White: The Book of Merlyn : Fontana, London 1977.

German translations

  • TH White: The King on Camelot. translated from English by Rudolf Rocholl, verses transferred by HC Artmann. 2 volumes. Klett-Cotta (Hobbit Press), Stuttgart 1976 (edition of parts 1–4):
  • TH White: The King on Camelot. New edition, translated from English by Rudolf Rocholl, verses translated by HC Artmann. Klett-Cotta (Hobbit Press), Stuttgart 2016, ISBN 978-3-608-94970-4 .
  • TH White: The Book of Merlin. translated from English by Irmela Brender. Diederichs, Cologne 1980, ISBN 3-424-00685-8 (translation of part 5).

Audiobooks (all read by Jochen Malmsheimer )

Secondary literature

  • Louis J. Boyle: TH White's Reinterpretation of Malory's Le Morte Darthur . Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston / Queenston / Lampeter 2008, ISBN 978-0-7734-4814-8 .
  • Elisabeth Brewer: TH White's The Once and Future King . DS Brewer, Cambridge 1993, ISBN 0-85991-393-7 .
  • Gill Davies, David Malcolm, John Simons (Eds.): Critical Essays on TH White, English Writer, 1906–1964 . Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston / Queenston / Lampeter 2008, ISBN 978-0-7734-4978-7 .
  • Monika Essl: The reception of Arthurian material in English and American literature of the 20th century by Thomas Berger, Marion Zimmer Bradley, EA Robinson, Mary Stewart and TH White . Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston / Queenston / Lampeter 1995, ISBN 0-7734-1243-3 .

Web links

Commons : The Once and Future King  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikibooks: The Once and Future King  - Learning and teaching materials (English)
Wikiquote: The Once and Future King  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ It is a repetition of the transformations already described in Volume 1 into an ant to illustrate militarism and into a goose to illustrate pacifism. The passages were subsequently added to the first volume when the editor initially refused to publish volume five.
  2. ↑ Louis J. Boyle: TH White's Reinterpretation of Malory's Le Morte Darthur . Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston / Queenston / Lampeter 2008, ISBN 978-0-7734-4814-8 , pp. 2-3.
  3. ↑ TH White: The King of Camelot . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2016, ISBN 978-3-608-94970-4 , pp. 268, 295-296.
  4. ↑ TH White: The King of Camelot . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2016, ISBN 978-3-608-94970-4 , pp. 274-275, 736-737.
  5. ↑ TH White: The King of Camelot . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2016, ISBN 978-3-608-94970-4 , pp. 764-776.
  6. ↑ Monika Essl: The reception of Arthurian material in the English and American literature of the 20th century by Thomas Berger, Marion Zimmer Bradley, EA Robinson, Mary Stewart and TH White . Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston / Queenston / Lampeter 1995, ISBN 0-7734-1243-3 , pp. 80-86.
  7. ↑ Monika Essl: The reception of Arthurian material in the English and American literature of the 20th century by Thomas Berger, Marion Zimmer Bradley, EA Robinson, Mary Stewart and TH White . Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston / Queenston / Lampeter 1995, ISBN 0-7734-1243-3 , pp. 88-91.
  8. ↑ Marcel Feige: The new lexicon of fantasy. 2nd Edition. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-89602-528-7 , p. 267.
  9. ↑ Louis J. Boyle: TH White's Reinterpretation of Malory's Le Morte Darthur . Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston / Queenston / Lampeter 2008, ISBN 978-0-7734-4814-8 , p. 1.
  10. ↑ Debbie Sly: Foreword. In: Gill Davies, David Malcolm, John Simons (Eds.): Critical Essays on TH White, English Writer, 1906–1964 . Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston / Queenston / Lampeter 2008, ISBN 978-0-7734-4978-7 , p. Iv.
  11. ↑ Alan Lupack: The Once and Future King: The Book That Grows Up. In: Arthuriana. 11, 3, 2001, pp. 103-114.
  12. ↑ Heather Worthington: From Children's Story to Adult Fiction: TH White's The Once and Future King. In: Arthuriana. 12, 2, 2002, pp. 97-119.
  13. ↑ Monika Essl: The reception of Arthurian material in the English and American literature of the 20th century by Thomas Berger, Marion Zimmer Bradley, EA Robinson, Mary Stewart and TH White . Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston / Queenston / Lampeter 1995, ISBN 0-7734-1243-3 , p. 12.
  14. ↑ Marcel Feige: The new lexicon of fantasy. 2nd Edition. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-89602-528-7 , p. 267.
  15. ^ Gill Davies: Introduction. In: Gill Davies, David Malcolm, John Simons (Eds.): Critical Essays on TH White, English Writer, 1906–1964 . Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston / Queenston / Lampeter 2008, ISBN 978-0-7734-4978-7 , pp. Ix-xiii.
  16. ↑ Louis J. Boyle: TH White's Reinterpretation of Malory's Le Morte Darthur . Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston / Queenston / Lampeter 2008, ISBN 978-0-7734-4814-8 , pp. 1-2.
  17. ↑ Hans Ulrich Seeber: English literary history. 5th edition. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-476-02421-3 , p. 38.
  18. ↑ Monika Essl: The reception of Arthurian material in the English and American literature of the 20th century by Thomas Berger, Marion Zimmer Bradley, EA Robinson, Mary Stewart and TH White . Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston / Queenston / Lampeter 1995, ISBN 0-7734-1243-3 .
  19. ↑ Lin Carter: Imaginary Worlds . Ballantine Books. 1973, ISBN 0-345-03309-4 , p. 125.
  20. ↑ Marcel Feige: The new lexicon of fantasy. 2nd Edition. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-89602-528-7 , p. 267.