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The Once and Future King - The Sword in the Stone

 

The Once and Future King is an Arthurian fantasy novel written by T. H. White. It was first published in 1958 and is mostly a composite of earlier works written in a period between 1938 and 1941.

The title comes from the inscription of the marker over King Arthur's grave, the internally rhymed hexameter: Hoc iacet Arthorus, rex quondam, rexque futurus — "Here lies Arthur, formerly king, and king to be."

T. H. White uses The Once and Future King as his own personal view of the ideal society. The book, most of which "takes place on the isle of Gramarye," chronicles the raising and educating of King Arthur, his rule as a king, and the romance between his best knight Sir Lancelot and his Queen Guinevere (which he spells Guenever). It ends immediately before Arthur's final battle against his illegitimate son Mordred. Though White admits his book's source material is loosely derived from Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur (The Death of Arthur), he reinterprets the epic events, filling them with renewed meaning for a world enduring the Second World War.

The Sword in the Stone is a novel by T. H. White, published in 1938, initially a stand-alone work but now the first part of a tetralogy The Once and Future King. A fantasy of the boyhood of King Arthur, it is a sui generis work which combines elements of legend, history, fantasy and comedy.



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Tags: written, Arthur, Future, hexameter, rhymed, Sword, Stone