The Fall of Arthur by J.R.R. Tolkien (review)

Around 1930, J.R.R. Tolkien, then Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University, began composing a long alliterative poem in modern English that bears the title The Fall of Arthur. Tolkien showed the unfinished work early on to his friend R.W. Chambers, Professor of English at University College, London, who praised the poem (‘very great indeed…really heroic’) and urged Tolkien to finish it. Not surprisingly, Tolkien did not, and seems to have shown the work to few people after that. A few years ago, after several requests, I was granted a glimpse of one of the handwritten manuscript pages at the Bodleian Library. Beginning as precise as the most careful Carolingian scribe, Tolkien’s handwriting deteriorated to near illegibility by the bottom of the page. And yet, there was great promise in this bit of narrative verse, a conversation between King Arthur and Gawain over whether to recall Lancelot from exile to face the army of the usurper Mordred. Grim voices emerged from Beowulfian half-lines; never before had Camelot sounded so like Heorot.

There was much excitement and anticipation among both Arthurians and Tolkienophiles when Christopher Tolkien announced last year that the entire extant poem (five cantos, forty printed pages) would be published with annotations and commentary in May 2013. So, after eighty years of waiting, do we have in The Fall of Arthur a major contribution to either the Arthurian or the Tolkienian corpus? I would argue that, unfortunately, the poem falls just short in both regards. There are glimpses of great power and beauty, but they are not sustained.

The narrative focuses on a moment first appearing in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae: Mordred’s seizure of queen and crown during Arthur’s continental wars. Tolkien was attracted particularly to the version of the story found in the fourteenth century Alliterative Morte Arthure, and his poem follows the sequence of events in the Morte with some exceptions. The Fall of Arthur begins with a description of Arthur and Gawain waging wars in the east, not, as in Geoffrey’s account, against the Roman emperor, but rather against Rome’s barbarian enemies, in particular the Saxons.

Halls and temples  of the heathen kings his might assailed  marching in conquest’

(18).

In the midst of Arthur’s success the King hears about Mordred’s betrayal, and wishes he had the company of Lancelot as he returns to Britain to face Mordred’s army:

‘Now for Lancelot  I long sorely, and we miss now most  the mighty swords of Ban’s kindred.  Best me seemeth swift word to send,  service craving to their lord of old.  To this leagued treason we must power oppose,  proud returning with matchless might  Mordred to humble’

(24).

Gawain reminds Arthur of the reason for Lancelot’s absence—

‘If Lancelot  hath loyal purpose let him prove repentance’

(25)—

and convinces the King that he has sufficient might to defeat Mordred and recover his crown:

‘Arthur and Gawain!  Evil greater hath fled aforetime  that we faced together’

(25).

Mordred, meanwhile, is tormented by his lust for

…Guinever the golden  with gleaming limbs. as fair and fell  as fay-woman in the world walking  for the woe of men no tear shedding…

(27).

Waked from his ‘desire unsated and savage fury’ (28), Mordred learns from a Frisian sea captain of Arthur’s swift return to Britain. Gathering a massive army of

foes of Arthur… freebooters of Erin and Alban  and East-Sassoin, of Almain and Angel  and the isles of mist; the crows of the coast  and the cold marshes’

(30),

Mordred turned from Guenevere and Camelot to oppose Arthur’s landing at Romeril, watching in fear for Lancelot’s blazon to appear among the sails of Arthur’s fleet. Instead it was the fiery griffon of Gawain that swept down upon the usurper’s navy, cutting down Mordred’s supporters with his sword of vengeance...