The treatment of the Tristram story by Arnold, Tennyson, and Swinburne

Of the several lesser romances which grouped themselves around the Arthurian cycle and were finally more or less incorporated in it, none has taken a deeper hold the poetic imagination than the story of the death-freighted love of Tristram and Iseult. The three poets of this thesis, Matthew Arnold, Lord Tennyson and Algernon Swinburne, all within a period of thirty years, told their story, assuming in an English audience a background of familiarity with it.