Can we talk about 'Multiple Versions Versions of the Same Thing' in a meaningful way?

Abstract

TEACHING THE STORY OF ARTHUR14I Vivien's power seems feeble indeed. Her only real accomplishment was imprisoning an already old man in a death-like trance, though not actual death itself, within a tree. If we look at the final stanza from the 'Merlin and Vivien' idyll, perhaps we can discover more than one meaning: Then crying ? have made his glory mine,' and shrieking out ? fool!' the harlot leapt Adown the forest, and the thicket closed Behind her, and the forest echo'd 'fool.' (969-72) The last word we hear echoing through this idyll is apparently directed towards Merlin, who let himselfbe Overtalk'd and overworn' by the harlot, Vivien. But perhaps the fool is Vivien, who believed so strongly in the power of her words. We never see Vivien again within the idylls, and her absence makes her power seem defunct (and foolish) by the end of The Idylb ofthe King. Or perhaps Tennyson himself is the fool for making Vivien an analog for himselfas a story-(re)teller. How powerful have his words been? Is Prince Albert the new model for chivalry? No other (re)tellers of the Arthur story seem to have picked up that stolen pearl. To conclude, I would like to return briefly to the challenges of teaching a comparativist course. While Tennyson's text is easy to discuss in relation to its historical background, that is, as a piece of Victorian literature—especially when one reads such Victorianisms as, 'Too much I trusted when I told you that,/ And stirred this vice in you which ruin'd man/ Thro' woman the first hour,' and while Tennyson's text is also easy to discuss purely in relation to other Arthurian texts, the challenge comes when one tries to move beyond the comparativist confines. There is more to say about the text than its relation to history and other texts. Tennyson's self-conscious handling of story-(re)tclling in the 'Merlin and Vivien' idyll allows one to discuss both historical and literary connections, but it also allows one to engage the text more deeply. Problems of story-(re)telling are as relevant to the twentieth-century American student as they were to Tennyson. An analysis ofTennyson's self-conscious handling ofstory-(re)telling in the 'Merlin and Vivien' idyll serves as a good example of how the Arthurian story can stay interesting even at the mid-semester! AYANNA T. THOMPSON Harvard University CAN WE TALK ABOUT 'MULTIPLE VERSIONS VERSIONS OF THE SAME THING' IN A MEANINGFUL WAY? In the spring term of 1998, I taught two sections of Professor Derek Pearsall's Story of Arthur. In this fast-moving, chronologically-oriented teaching environment, it was often more productive to focus on the smaller, week-by-wcek textual questions than the larger Story ofArthur framework and the implications of Arthur's popularity, though these matters were discussed and, inevitably, never resolved. Hindsight has left me with a more acute sense ofthe difficulties ofapproaching nuanced comparative 142ARTHURIANA work in a large lecture format than I had during the term. Looking back on the course, I feel as though I have seen in action something that has become a truism of pedagogical criticism: that the language used in a syllabus, and the contents of a syllabus, and the conceptual organization ofa course, strongly precondition students and teaching staffalike to approach the class in particular ways. One ofmy retroactive impressions of the class is that Arthur's coherence over time—his existence as a great king and a great literary entity with almost transcendent qualities, such that everyone is always trying to penetrate his one irrecoverable true nature—was implicit in the organization of the class and in the teaching formats of my own sections, and, I speculate, the sections of all the teaching fellows. In class discussions and in exams and papers throughout the term, there was a sense that the earliest texts hinted at, and the later texts realized, different versions of one great Arthur. It was sometimes an almost subliminal assumption, and at other times would be uttered in such a way that it could be questioned, deconstructed, and examined—only to arise again in...