A study guide for T. H. White's "The Once and Future King"

By Gale and Cengage

A study guide for T. H. White's "The Once and Future King", excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students series. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: May 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535834599

Book preview

09

The Once and Future King

T. H. White

1958

Introduction

T. H. White's The Once and Future King, published in 1958, is by far the best-known twentieth-century retelling of the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. The novel served as the basis for the Walt Disney animated movie The Sword in the Stone (1963), the 1960 Alan Jay Lerner and Frederic Lowe Broadway musical Camelot, and the 1967 movie Camelot, directed by Josh Logan.

In all, White published five books about King Arthur and his Knights, using medieval texts (notably those of Sir Thomas Malory) as his source material. The first, The Sword in the Stone, published in 1938, traces the boyhood of young Arthur. The second, The Witch in the Wood, published in 1939, is about the early days of Arthur's kingship and tells the story of Queen Morgause and her four sons. The third volume, The Ill-Made Knight, published in 1940, introduces Lancelot. In 1958, when White completed his fourth book of the series, The Candle in the Wind, he chose to republish the three earlier books along with the fourth in one volume titled The Once and Future King. His final Arthurian work, The Book of Merlyn, although written in 1941, was not published until 1977.

Readers of all ages find the stories of Arthur recounted in The Once and Future King fascinating and timeless. The novel is at once a humorous account of young Arthur's education, the chronicle of King Arthur's valor, the spiritual journey of knights in search of the Holy Grail, the tragic love triangle of Arthur, Guenever, and Lancelot, and a social commentary on the political events of White's own day. The novel asks readers to consider themes such as power, justice, love, and betrayal. Although more than a half-century has passed since the publication of The Once and Future King, the novel remains widely available and widely read, an important contribution to the cycle of stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

Author Biography

T. H. White was born Terence Hanbury White in Bombay, India, on May 29, 1906. His father, Garrick Hanbury White, was a police superintendent. His mother was Constance Edith Southcote Aston White. When White was just five he was sent to his grandparents in England to recover from a stomach infection. According to both Sylvia Warner Townsend in her biography of White and Elisabeth Brewer in her book T. H. White's The Once and Future King, White's father was an alcoholic, and the relationship between his parents was volatile. White's relationship with his mother was particularly troubled. Brewer notes that this was an important influence on The Once and Future King. Likewise, Hugh T. Keenan, in a biographical essay, T. H. White, asserts that White's dysfunctional interaction with his mother accounted for his sadistic tendencies, a trait he gave to his character Lancelot.

In 1920, White was sent to Cheltenham College, a military-style boarding school. There he was subjected to ill treatment, as were all the students, by their upper-level peers. It was here, however, that he first learned about Sir Thomas Malory, the fifteenth-century