Inventory of Inklings Arthuriana

Dear Scholars! I need your help again. What follows reflects an attempt to compile a complete list of works by the four major Inklings that have at least some tangential connection with the legends of Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, or the Quest or the Holy Grail. These are not complete bibliographical citations. Instead, they are short descriptions of the nature of each work. The purpose of this list is to give readers an idea of how many Arthurian works, of what sorts, each Inkling composed.

Would you be willing to check any part of this list, whatever your area of expertise, and offer additions, suggestions, corrections, critiques, and commentary? That would be very helpful! Thank you. 

Owen Barfield

Owen Barfield

1947. The “Mark and Tristram” letters. Comedic correspondence between Barfield and Lewis. 11 June to 20 June 1947.

1930s? 40s? The Quest of Sangreal. A sixteen-page adaptation of Grail episodes from Chrétien and Malory. It is a work of Eurythmia, composed for use at the London School of Eurythmics. It remains unpublished and is in the Bodleian library. The date is unknown.

1930s? 40s? Annotations in Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur. This is a copy of the Everyman’s Library edition that was originally published in 1906 and reprinted in 1934 (volume two) and 1935 (volume one). The exact dates of Barfield’s notes and annotations are unknown but probably predate Vinaver’s 1947 edition of the Winchester MS of Malory.

1975. Night Operation. A dystopian novella whose plot is a “Grail” story. 1975.

J. R. R. Tolkien

J. R. R. Tolkien

1925. Sir Gawain & The Green Knight. An edition of the fourteenth-century Middle English poem that Tolkien edited with his colleague E. V. Gordon.

1930s? The Fall of Arthur. An unfinished poem in alliterative meter. Published posthumously.

1930. “The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun.” A poem set in Broceliande. Written in 1930 and published in 1945.

1950s. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Tolkien’s translation, written in the early 1950s and broadcast by the BBC in 1953. Published posthumously.

1926? Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary together with Sellic Spell. Throughout the commentary, Tolkien compares Hrothgar’s court at Heorot with Arthur’s court at Camelot. Published posthumously.

C. S. Lewis

C. S. Lewis

1915-1916. Letters to Arthur Greeves, whom he calls “Galahad.” CL.

1916. “The Quest of Bleheris.” An Arthurian prose tale sent to Arthur Greeves. It remains unpublished and is in the Bodleian library.

1919. “Victory,” a poem in Spirits in Bondage.

* dates of composition? A lost poem, possibly entitled “Decadence,” “Retreat,” or “Venusberg” (See King, “Lost but Found,” and Christopher, “C. S. Lewis’s Lost Arthurian Poem).

1930s? “Launcelot.” NP.

1935. “The Alliterative Metre.” This essay makes reference to an “alliterative poem” by Tolkien, which JRRT said was probably The Fall of Arthur. Reh and SLE.

1936. The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition. An academic analysis of the courtly love tradition and chivalry. Includes chapters on Chrétien and The Faerie Queene, and lots of discussion of the “matter of Britain.” Argues that “in the hands of a great poet, the Arthurian story, treated in terms of courtly love, produced the first notable examples of psychological or ‘sentimental’ fiction.”

1941. “On reading The Faerie Queene.” Essay. MRL.

1942. “Psycho-Analysis and Literary Criticism.” Essay. In a discussion of Jungian archetypes, Lewis mentions that he is one of those who have discovered “behind the Arthurian stones some far off echo of real happenings in the thick darkness of British history.” SLE.

1944. “Is English Doomed?” Essay. Contains a few references to Launcelot. PCon.

1945. That Hideous Strength. Final novel of the Ransom cycle.

1945. “Addison.” Essay. Contains some discussion of the culture of courtesy in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. SLE.

1945. “The Funeral of a Great Myth.” Essay. Puts the death of Arthur in the context of grand, tragic endings in many myths. CRf.

1947. “The Morte darthur.” Review of Vinaver. MRL.

1947. The “Mark and Tristram” letters. Comedic correspondence between Barfield and Lewis. 11 June to 20 June 1947.

1950. “The Literary Impact of the Authorised Version.” Essay. distinguishes between a “source” and an “influence” and discussed Malory as source and influence for Tennyson. AfP and SLE.

1940. “The Necessity of Chivalry.” Essay. Comparison of Malory and modern times. PCon.

1940. “Why I am Not a Pacifist.” Talk given to a pacifist society in Oxford. WG, TH, CpR.

1948. “Williams and the Arthuriad.” Commentary on CW’s TTL and RSS. AT.

1952. “Hero and Leander.” Essay. Talks about the composite nature of Malory. SLE.

1954. English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (Excluding Drama). Lewis’s most exhaustive academic work, it includes a sizable section on Sidney and Spenser.

1954. “Edmund Spenser, 1552-99.” Essay. MRL.

1954. “The Gods Return to Earth.” Review of The Fellowship of the Ring. Reprinted as “Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.” Comparison of JRRT’s feeling of great depth and work behind it to Malory.

1965. “Imagination and Thought in the Middle Ages.” Two-part lecture series. MRL.

1961. “Neoplatonism in the Poetry of Spenser.” Review essay. MRL.

1962. “The Anthropological Approach.” Essay. Uses Gawain and the Grail as examples of the uselessness of some anthropological “explanations” of literary phenomenon. SLE.

1963. “The English Prose Morte.” Essay. I&I.

1964. The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Lectures, published posthumously.

1967. Spenser’s Images of Life. Lecture notes compiled by Alistair Fowler and published posthumously.

*date of composition? “Spenser’s Cruel Cupid.” Essay. MRL.

*date of composition? “Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism,” also called “Fern Seeds and Elephants.” Essay. One brief reference: “We may without disgrace believe in a historical Arthur.” CRf, FSE.

*date of composition? “On Science Fiction.” Essay. Includes “some of Malory (but none of Malory’s best work)” in the “marvelous” category of science fiction. OW, TOW.

*date of composition? “The Genesis of a Medieval Book.” Essay. MRL.

*date of composition? “De Audiendis Poetis.” *comments? Essay. MRL.

Charles Williams

Charles Williams

1912-1916? 1923? The Arthurian Commonplace Book. A scrapbook of notes and clippings relating to the Matter of Britain, especially the Grail. It remains unpublished and is in the Bodleian library.

1927. The Masque of the Manuscript.

1929. The Masque of Perusal.

1929. The Rite of the Passion.

1930. The Masque of the Termination of Copyright.

1930. Heroes and Kings. A collection of poetry. Arthurian poems in this volume: “Tristram’s Song to Iseult,” “Palmonides’s Song to Iseult,” “Lamoracke’s Song to Morgause,” “Percivale’s Song to Blanchfleur,” “A Song of Palomides,” “Taliessin’s Song of a Princess of Byzantium,” “The Song of the Riding of Galahad.”

1931. Lascelles Abercrombie published an anthology entitled New English Poems: A Miscellany of Contemporary Verse Never Before Published. Arthurian poems by Williams in this anthology: “Percivale’s Song” and “Taliessin’s Song of Lancelot’s Mass. 340-346.

1931. Three Plays. Arthurian poems interspersed between the play in this volume: “Taliessin’s Song of Logres,” “Taliessin’s Song of Byzantium,” “Taliessin’s Song of the King’s Crowning,” “Taliessin’s Song of the Setting of Galahad in the King’s Bed.”

1938. Taliessin Through Logres. A volume of twenty-four Arthurian poems.

1938. Four poems published in Christendom 8 (in March). “Prelude,” “Taliessin’s Return to Logres,” “The Vision of Empire,” and “The Calling of Arthur.” 19-30.

1939. “The poem Divites Dimisit,” an early version of “The Prayers of the Pope,” was published in Theology 39 (December). 421-424.

1940. Phyllis Jones edited an anthology entitled Modern Verse. “The Coming of Palomides” is included.

1941. The poem “Taliessin in the Rose Garden” is published in the Dublin Review 208 (January). 82-86.

1941. The poem “Dinadan’s Song” is published in Time and Tide 22 (March 15). 210.

1941. The article “Charles Williams on Taliessin Through Logres” appears in Poetry Review 32 (March/April). 77-81.

1942. The poem “The Queen’s Servant” is published in Poetry 2. 38-41.

1944. The Region of the Summer Stars. A volume of eight Arthurian poems.

1944. The article “Malory and the Grail Legend” appears in the Dublin Review 214 (April). 144-153

1948. Arthurian Torso: Containing the Posthumous Fragment of The Figure of
Arthur by Charles Williams and a Commentary on the Arthurian Poems of Charles Williams by C. S. Lewis. Williams’s prose study of Arthur and Lewis’s commentary on TTL and RSS.

1948. The poem “The Calling of Arthur” is included in the Penguin Anthology of Contemporary Verse. Ed. Kenneth Allot. 73-74.

1953. The poems “Mount Badon” and “Taliessin’s Song of the Unicorn” are included in The Faber Book of Twentieth Century Verse. Ed. John Heath-Stubbs and David Wright. 336-339.

1958. Charles Williams: The Image of the City, and Other Essays is edited by Anne Ridler. This essay collection contains many important prose pieces about the Arthurian legends and their meaning to Williams.

1991. Arthurian Poets: Charles Williams. Ed. David Llewellyn Dodds. This two-part collection contains “Part 1: The published poems” and “Part 2: Uncollected and unpublished poems.”