In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.
This is the final episode of Series Two, and our guest Elizabeth Elliott is helping us explore Camelot in The Once and Future King by T.H. White. Published in 1958, The Once and Future King adapts the famous stories of King Arthur and his Round Table.
Beginning with the childhood of Arthur in the first book, The Sword in the Stone, White’s version of the familiar stories are complex examinations of leadership, nobility, romance and war. Of White’s novel, Burgess writes, "This is not remote and fabulous history: the lesson of the breaking of the Round Table is for our time."
So says the YouTube blurb for this video.
I love T.H. White's writing, but The Once and Future King is what literary theorists call an unstable text. We can't even agree how many books there are in the sequence. Is it four, or should The Book of Merlyn, which wasn't published until 13 years after White's death, be included to make it five? Is it for adults of children? The first book, The Sword in the Stone, is surely written for children and shows White's love of John Masefield, but the later books seem far more adult in their tone and themes.
And then there is his rewriting of the first two books. I'm far more familiar with the original versions, and I suspect I'm not alone in this. Maybe we all construct our own personal versions of The Once and Future King?
Anyway, this is a good discussion of The Once and Future King and some of these issues.
No comments:
Post a Comment