Cambridge poet Malcolm Guite says King Arthur offers antidote to toxic masculinity

NASHVILLE, Tennessee — British poet, priest, and Cambridge University scholar Malcolm Guite believes society faces a crisis of masculinity and imagination, and he's turning to one of literature's oldest heroes to help address it: King Arthur.

In his new book, The Coming of Arthur,the second installment in his four-volume epic poem Merlin's Isle: An Arthuriad,Guite revisits the legendary king's journey from boyhood to leadership, exploring what it means to become a man who leads through humility, courage, sacrifice and service.

Speaking to The Christian Post during the recent Sing! Conference, Guite lamented that young men today are receiving contradictory, damaging messages about masculinity. And, as a result, many are confused about their identities and responsibilities.

"Culture isn't telling men just one thing. They're getting all kinds of influences from all kinds of places," Guite said.

On one end of the spectrum, he said, young men are told they should be ashamed of their masculinity, while on the other, online “manosphere” personalities like Andrew and Tristan Tate promote a vision of manhood centered on control and dominance over women.

"Now neither of those things are true, but the same kid is getting both those messages," he said.

The result, Guite contended, is a generation trying to understand itself through social media content rather than the stories that have historically shaped young people's character and virtue.

"I think the result of that is confusion, and it's mostly confusion delivered in tiny sound bites and reels, and that's part of the problem," he said. "There's not a long, coherent story."

Set for release on Nov. 9 through Nashville-based Rabbit Room Press, The Coming of Arthur follows the young Arthur, raised by Sir Ector and guided by the wizard Merlin, as he discovers his royal identity and learns the responsibilities that come with leadership.

The 372-page hardcover features more than 25 illustrations by artist Stephen Crotts and a foreword by bestselling author and mythographer Martin Shaw. It follows Galahad and the Grail, which reached Amazon's Top 50 bestselling books chart, while The Coming of Arthur has already topped the retailer's new releases in the poetry category.

According to Guite, who counts C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien among his greatest literary influences, Arthur's transformation into a just and kind king offers a biblical alternative to modern interpretations of power.

"He has to learn humility, has to learn how to serve, but one day he has to realize his true kingship and learn to be a just and good king," Guite said. "Well, that's not just true of Arthur. That's true of every young man."

The poet pointed to the biblical description of believers as a "royal priesthood” in 1 Peter, explaining that the familiar fairy-tale language of princes and princesses reflects spiritual truths.

"We're all children of the heavenly king," he said. "We read fairy stories to children about princes and princesses because actually, in the big cosmic view, they are princes and princesses."

Perhaps the most recognizable aspect of Arthur's story is the establishment of the Round Table, where knights pledge themselves to chivalry and honor. 

According to Guite, the original medieval stories emerged from a world of violence and instability, where military strength was often used to terrorize the weak. Arthur's vision challenged that culture by insisting that courage must be tempered by Christian compassion.

"You had to be strong and courageous, and where necessary fierce in battle, but you had to know what you were fighting for, and actually to have all the virtues of peace," he said.

In one scene, for example, Arthur tells Guinevere that the purpose of his military victories is to secure peace and protect women and children, a declaration that moves her to tears. That story's emphasis on humility and service, the poet said, is especially relevant when young men are increasingly drawn to controversial online influencers.

Guite’s message is resonating with younger viewers. Recently, he discovered that roughly 80% of his YouTube audience, which he said numbers more than 217,000 subscribers, consists of young men between 18 and 30.

"I thought, well, at least if they're watching me, they're not watching the Tate brothers," he said. "Boy, is there a need.”

Guite also said the appeal of Arthurian legend lies partly in its ability to address universal human struggles. In The Coming of Arthur, for example, Arthur must confront the insecurity of having been raised apart from his biological parents. His struggle to believe he is loved becomes essential to his development as a leader.

"If he carries that insecurity about whether he's loved or valued, he's going to visit that on other people," Guite said. "You have a deep assurance from God in Christ that it's OK to be you. You don't have to waste your time and other people's time proving yourself to them. You can actually do something worth doing."

Guite, a life fellow at Girton College, Cambridge, said his fascination with Arthurian legend began in childhood, when his Scottish mother recited poetry and told him stories of knights, quests and the Holy Grail.

Those early experiences left a lasting impression, particularly the explicitly Christian elements of the medieval tales. But as he grew older and studied English literature at Cambridge, Guite said he became frustrated with modern retellings that minimized the stories' Christian foundations.

"I felt they just like airbrushed the Christianity right out of it," he said, adding he began dreaming of retelling the entire Arthurian cycle in poetry when he was just 16, but decades passed before he felt ready to undertake the project.

It was not until his 60s when he had a “creative awakening” while on a walk, the author said, and from that moment, “I knew I had to do this thing.”

The resulting project will span 12 poetic books published across four volumes, with Days of the Round Table scheduled for 2027 and The Passing of Arthur concluding the series in 2028.

Unlike many modern retellings of Aurthor, Guite stressed that the Arthurian cycle is a story of the Bible: creation, humanity's fall and ultimate redemption through Jesus Christ.

He pointed out that one of the story’s central motifs, the wasteland, reflects the biblical teaching that humanity's sin has consequences for all creation, while the healing associated with the Grail points toward restoration through Christ.

"Our fall has brought about a wasteland, and our redemption in Christ will heal the wasteland," he said. "The whole story is a conversation between Christianity and what we used to know and believe, the myths we had, and I believe the stories are told to show that Christianity is the missing piece in those stories. It crowns them.”

Beyond his concerns about masculinity, Guite said he hopes his epic poem will help counter the growing erosion of human creativity and storytelling amid the rise of artificial intelligence. 

During Keith and Kristyn Getty’s Sing! Conference, themed "Symphony of Scripture," Guite attended a discussion featuring Christian apologists John Lennox and Wes Huff about the opportunities and dangers of AI.

He stressed that while technology can serve legitimate purposes, including analyzing medical scans and assisting with complex tasks, there is “great danger in allowing AI to pretend to be human."

"A companion is somebody you've broken bread with and shared table fellowship with," he said. "The computer doesn't have any of that, you know. It's not a companion. … The whole point about poetry is it's making a bridge of words between my inner experience and your inner experience, and a machine can fake that, but it's a fake because the machine has no inner experience to offer you.”

Recently, podcaster Ginny Yurich dubbed Guite’s work “The opposite of AI slop.” He said every line of Merlin's Isle begins in his imagination before he writes it by hand with a fountain pen. He then transcribes the work onto a computer, prints it out and returns to handwritten revisions.

"I think we should more and more and more vigorously do the things which are distinctly human and which computers can't do, and leave the computers to do the non-human things," he said. "I always imagine what would last if there was a year-long power cut. I want to make something we have that will survive a power cut, and survive a computer crash."

The success of Galahad and the Grail, he said, suggests a growing hunger for substantive storytelling.

"There's a crisis of meaning. There's a crisis of masculinity. There's a crisis of disenchantment," he said. "So a story which is about meaning, about what true manhood would be, and is about reenchantment."

And despite the ambitious scope of the project, Guite said he’s convinced that ancient stories have something essential to offer a culture increasingly defined by fleeting digital experiences.

"Story is what gives you coherence as a person," he said. "We're not just a series of random episodes happening in our minds. We're going from somewhere to somewhere. We're on a purposeful journey, and you know that means story."