Defense of Guenevere

pub in volume The Defence of Guevevere and other Poems (1858)
intertext with Malory’s Morte D’Arthur
interlocking pentameter tercets
starts in medias res diagetically after Gauwaine’s accusation but also in media terms in conversation with Malory and the body of Arthurian literature (cf Cowan 2015 on mediation and translation)
- with Christmas setting also Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (ln 62)
75-6 "let the clock tick, tick, / To my unhappy pulse, that beat right through / my eager body"
elaborate nature simile 93-103 again classical feeling or medieval
136-8 erotic charge within bounded imagery
165 "So, ever must I dress me to the fight”: adopting masculine language to continue persuading Gauwaine after mentioning his mother, who died because accused of infidelity
- again a masculine simile in 288-90
244-58 the containment of her gender roles ("For no man cares now to know why I sigh"), she cannot ask a man to speak to her in her room without suspicion.
- reminiscent of the more claustrophobic containment in "Mariana"
295 and ends in medias res with Launcelot coming

William Morris