''The Earthly Paradise'' is an

epic poem In poetry, an epic is a lengthy narrative poem typically about the extraordinary deeds of extraordinary characters who, in dealings with gods or other superhuman forces, gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants. With regard to ...

William Morris William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was an English textile designer, poet, artist, writer, and socialist activist associated with the British Arts and Crafts movement. He was a major contributor to the revival of traditiona ...

. It is a lengthy collection of retellings of various myths and legends from Greece and Scandinavia. Publication began in 1868 and several later volumes followed until 1870. The volumes were published by F.S. Ellis. Morris uses a

frame story A frame story (also known as a frame tale, frame narrative, sandwich narrative, or intercalation) is a literary technique that serves as a companion piece to a story within a story, where an introductory or main narrative sets the stage either fo ...

concerning a group of medieval wanderers searching for a land of everlasting life. After much disillusionment they discover a surviving colony of Greeks with whom they exchange stories. The poem is divided into twelve sections, each section representing a

month A month is a unit of time, used with calendars, that is approximately as long as a natural phase cycle of the Moon; the words ''month'' and ''Moon'' are cognates. The traditional concept of months arose with the cycle of Moon phases; such lunar mo ...

of the year and containing two tales told in verse, drawn largely from

classical mythology Classical mythology, also known as Greco-Roman mythology or Greek and Roman mythology, is the collective body and study of myths from the ancient Greeks and ancient Romans. Mythology, along with philosophy and political thought, is one of the m ...

mediaeval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and t ...

legends, including the

Icelandic sagas The sagas of Icelanders (, ), also known as family sagas, are a subgenre, or text group, of Icelandic sagas. They are prose narratives primarily based on historical events that mostly took place in Iceland in the ninth, tenth, and early elev ...

. All Morris's subsequent books were published as "by the author of ''The Earthly Paradise''".

Story

The prologue introduces a company of Norsemen who have fled the pestilence and set sail to seek the fabled Earthly Paradise "across the western sea where none grow old." Not having succeeded in their quest, they have returned "shrivelled, bent, and grey," after lengthy wanderings abroad, to a "nameless city in a distant sea" where the worship of the ancient Greek gods has not died out. In this hospitable city they spend the rest of their lives. Twice each month they participate in a feast at which a tale is told, alternately, by one of the city elders and one of the wanderers. The former tell tales on classical subjects, and the latter draw their tales from Norse and other medieval sources. Thus, of the twenty-four stories, twelve are Greek and classical and twelve are medieval or romantic. Each pair of stories corresponds with one of the twelve months, which follow the natural succession of the seasons. In this way, the first two tales are told in March, the second two in April, and so on. Thus the long poem is neatly partitioned into twelve books with interpolated prologues and epilogues in the form of lyrics about the progressive changes in nature.

Form

''The Earthly Paradise'' is written in different forms. William Morris used

rhyme royal Rhyme royal (or rime royal) is a rhyme, rhyming stanza form that was introduced to English literature, English poetry by Geoffrey Chaucer. The form enjoyed significant success in the fifteenth century and into the sixteenth century. It has had a mo ...

heroic couplet A heroic couplet is a traditional form for English poetry, commonly used in epic and narrative poetry, and consisting of a rhyming pair of lines in iambic pentameter. Use of the heroic couplet was pioneered by Geoffrey Chaucer in the '' Legen ...

iambic tetrameter Iambic tetrameter is a meter (poetry), poetic meter in Ancient Greek poetry, ancient Greek and Latin poetry; as the name of ''a rhythm'', iambic tetrameter consists of four metra, each metron being of the form , x – u – , , consisting of a spo ...

. This is an example of seven-line rhyme royal (with

rhyme scheme A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhymes at the end of each line of a poem or song. It is usually referred to by using letters to indicate which lines rhyme; lines designated with the same letter all rhyme with each other. An example of the ABAB rh ...

ABABBCC).

Reception

''The Earthly Paradise'' was generally well received by reviewers: according to one study it "established Morris's reputation as one of the foremost poets of his day".

Influence

Tolkien's use of frame stories was directly influenced by Morris's poem. In particular, the frame story of

Tolkien's legendarium Tolkien's legendarium is the body of J. R. R. Tolkien's mythopoeic writing, unpublished in his lifetime, that forms the background to his ''The Lord of the Rings'', and which his son Christopher summarized in his compilation of '' The Silma ...

, starting from the travels of Ælfwine the mariner, was modelled on the poem's frame story, that "mariners of Norway, having ... heard of the Earthly Paradise, set sail to find it". Morris's "wanderers" reach "A nameless city in a distant sea / White as the changing walls of faërie", where they hear and narrate legends including "The Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon"; Tolkien's '' Book of Lost Tales II'' contains one of the legendarium's foundation-poems that similarly describes the "Wanderer" Earendel, who sails "West of the Moon, east of the Sun".

References

Bibliography

''The Earthly Paradise''. A Poem by William Morris (Review).

* * (new impression, in one volume, of the 1899 text)

External links

Scan of The Earthly Paradise, parts 1 and 2

Scan of The Earthly Paradise, parts 3

Transcription by the William Morris Archive
{{DEFAULTSORT:Earthly Paradise Poetry by William Morris Epic poems in English Victorian poetry 1868 poems 1869 poems 1870 poems Works set on fictional islands