King Arthur’s Enchantresses: Morgan and Her Sisters in Arthurian Tradition 9780755694976, 9781845111137

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Acknowledgements

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oo many people to thank individually have patiently answered my questions, contributed their thoughts and listened to my views about enchantresses over the years, including generations of students at St John’s College, Oxford, and international students at Advanced Studies in England, European Studies and Oxford University Department of Continuing Education summer courses. But special thanks must go to Cyril Edwards, who allowed the use of his translation in progress, who lent his slide collection and gave lots of valuable pointers to enchantresses medieval and modern. Jane Taylor, Helen Cooper, Juliette Wood, Sally Mapstone have all been helpful and encouraging; Rosemary Power, Laura Taylor and Evangeline Morphos gave me useful references. I owe particular thanks to Barbara White, who first got me writing on this subject, and to the long-suffering staff of the Taylorian Library in Oxford. Alex Wright has been an enormously encouraging editor; thanks go to him and the rest of the Tauris team. Both I and the publishers would like to register our gratitude to the Vinaver Trust, whose generosity enabled the many reproductions with which the book is illustrated.

For my father and in memory of my mother Gloria Larrington, – 

Introduction

‘It is Morgan le Fay,’ he said. ‘It is difficult to explain her.’ ‘I should not try.’ … The Wart thought it was time to ask a tactful question, so he made a polite cough and said: ‘Please, who is Morgan the Fay?’ All three answered at once. ‘She’m a bad ’un,’ said Little John. ‘She is a fairy,’ said Robin. ‘No, she is not,’ said Marian. ‘She is an enchantress.’1

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  Robin Hood and Maid Marian – not to mention the young Arthur and his foster-brother Kay – are unsure about the nature of Arthurian legend’s most famous enchantress, it is no wonder that modern readers know little more about one of the most powerful women in Arthurian story. If they have heard of Morgan le Fay at all, most people know her as Arthur’s wicked sister and the mother of the man who eventually usurps his throne and kills him. Yet when she first appears, Morgan is neither Arthur’s sister nor wicked. Nor, in medieval texts, is she ever Mordred’s mother; this distinction is reserved for her sister, the Queen of Orkney. About the Lady of the Lake, and Vivien–Nimuë, the woman who imprisons Merlin, people know even less. The Lady may be most familiar now as ‘the ‘watery tart’ in Monty Python and the Holy Grail who King Arthur claims endowed him with his right to the throne, while Vivien’s dealings with Merlin are known largely to enthusiasts for Victorian culture. Yet Arthurian legend is today more popular than ever in Europe and North America; the changing status of women in the modern era has focused attention on the female roles in the Arthurian cycle as never

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before. This book sets out to uncover the history and meanings of the mysterious, beautiful and unpredictable enchantresses in Arthurian narratives from their first appearances in the mid-twelfth century to the present day. Enchantresses are not witches; they are sexually attractive women who employ their magic for their own ends, not in the service of Satan. Always alluring, intelligent and independent, sometimes they support the aims of Arthurian chivalry, at other times they can be hostile and petty-minded. As this book will argue, enchantresses often work at an interesting tangent to the courtly world, challenging or unsettling its norms, making opportunities for other voices, particularly those of women, to be heard above the clash of lance against armour and the thunderous sound of charging hooves. The enchantresses – Morgan le Fay, the Lady of the Lake, the multiplynamed woman who turns Merlin’s own magic against him, and (in modern times) the Queen of Orkney – need to be understood primarily in their medieval contexts. They are aristocratic ladies with the leisure to devote themselves to the study of magic, for medieval romance is set in a strictly hierarchical culture where noble birth is integral to success, and there is no interest in the lives of other classes. The enchantresses live in a fictional society where the supreme value is male honour, gained on the battlefield, by single combat against other knights, or by winning prizes in formally organized tournaments. Though she may be admired for her beauty, a woman wins honour only vicariously, by association with a great knight. Arthurian knights subscribe to the code which nineteenth-century scholars called ‘courtly love’, but for which medievalists prefer the medieval French term fin’amors, a love which is as much spiritual as physical, which is thought to improve the character and which ought not to endanger the soul. The knight offers to serve his lady by performing courageous deeds in her name, hoping that eventually she will reward him with her love. That the lady may be married to another does not necessarily inhibit the relationship, though it makes consummation more problematic. The lady is required to be faithful to her lover, to encourage his chivalric feats and to grant him her love when he has done enough to earn it. The medieval Arthurian romances in which the enchantresses appear were written by anonymous clerics: educated priests who lived in noble courts, serving as secretaries and spiritual advisers. Unlike the characters in their romances, and most of their target audience, they were not knights. Clerics were frequently ambivalent towards the values of the nobility, a value system which they understood, but from which they were excluded; they were also

Introduction

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inclined to share the misogynist views current in the medieval church. Thus when they write about enchantresses, they often use them as vehicles for the critique of dominant values. Though clerics and enchantresses ultimately fail to change the institution which is central to the world of Arthurian romance, they are sometimes successful in renegotiating its priorities. Pre-eminently survivors, the enchantresses outlive the collapse of the Arthurian kingdom, presiding over Arthur’s end as he leaves for Avalon in their black-draped barge, while their own deaths are rarely recounted. Their quasi-immortality raises the question as to whether they are supernatural figures. While it is clear that Lancelot’s foster mother was originally a water fairy, and that in French romance Morgan acquires some of the traits of the fairy-mistress, in Arthurian texts, both chronicle and romance, the authors are at pains to stress that the enchantresses are lovely, learned human women. Arthurian texts operate on two levels at once. Individual works, created by single authors or teams of authors, also participate in a larger Arthurian universe, which incorporates all existing Arthurian texts. Although the characters have distinctive roles in the plot of any one tale, their actions and fates are, to some extent, constrained by tradition. This is most often the case in medieval texts, but critical responses to modern Arthurian retellings often invoke fidelity to Malory’s Morte Darthur or to other canonical versions of the story as a significant measure of a new version’s success. Thus when the dying Arthur cheerfully bequeaths his kingdom to Lancelot and Guenevere in Jerry Zucker’s film First Knight (), many viewers regard it as a violation of the rules of Arthurian narrative. In reading the Morte Darthur modern readers may be simultaneously aware of Malory’s French sources and of the future Arthurian worlds of Tennyson, of Camelot and Excalibur. This interrelationship of texts within the Arthurian universe allows for allusion, anticipation and reversals of expectation; as Hans Jauss observes, ‘the reader must negate the character of the individual text as a work in order to enjoy the charm of an already ongoing game with known rules and still unknown surprises.’2 The enchantresses move on the periphery of the Arthurian court, but they often intervene directly in life in Camelot. Their actions, sudden and mysterious, unsettle accepted notions of women’s roles in chivalric society. They choose their own lovers, break with their families and use their magical powers to affect the fates both of individuals and of kingdoms. Their potential to disturb prevailing orthodoxies is even more marked when they reappear in the modern era. Vivien’s beauty and wit address a range of masculine anxieties

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and social tensions in the Victorian period, while the twentieth century sees a major revaluation of female characters in Arthurian narratives, particularly in those roles in which they can think and act for themselves. Freudian psychoanalysis, the visual possibilities of cinema and the growing interest in ‘New Age’ religions all impact on the enchantresses – particularly Morgan and Morgause – revitalizing Arthurian story for contemporary audiences. Chapter  outlines the nature of magic in medieval romance texts, demonstrating that the enchantresses are not – in Arthurian contexts – supernatural figures. Magic is a craft acquired through hard study. Chapter  explores the relationship between Morgan and Arthur, attempting to reconcile her healing and comforting presence at the end of his life with her alienation both from the court and from her brother; it uncovers her animus against Guenevere. The third chapter examines Morgan’s supreme feat of magic. This caters to women’s, not men’s, desires, and conditions her complex relationships with two prominent Arthurian knights: Lancelot and her nephew Gawain. The fourth chapter shows the deterioration of Morgan’s character in later tradition as she becomes associated with petty acts of malice, failed plots and comic mishaps. Chapter  analyses the various traditions associated with Merlin’s beloved, arguing for evolving views about virginity, women’s thirst for knowledge and intimacy, and the tensions between sexual desire and spiritual salvation. Chapter  uncovers the story of Morgan’s sister, the Queen of Orkney. Lacking in medieval texts the powers of an enchantress, she exemplifies the fate of the courtly woman who transgresses against the honour system. In Chapters  and  the book moves forward to the modern era; Chapter  studies the Arthurian revival of the nineteenth century and the ways in which Vivien crystallizes some primary Victorian obsessions, while the final chapter surveys the multiple ways in which the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have rewritten the stories of Morgause and Morgan. The enchantresses prove their enduring cultural usefulness in contemporary Arthurian depictions. In the multifariousness of their roles they embody the allure and fascination of women who seek independence from, and power over, the men who dominate their world.

Medieval Arthurian Texts There are a very large number of medieval Arthurian texts whose chronology and relationship to one another are not always clear. In what follows, I note the dates and relationships of the most important texts discussed in the first

Introduction

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six chapters.3 The first biography of Arthur was written in Latin by Geoffrey of Monmouth around , the Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain). This mentions no enchantresses, though Merlin is prominent, but it does record Arthur’s departure to Avalon to be healed of his wounds after the final battle. Morgan is introduced in Geoffrey’s later Vita Merlini (c. ) as the healer who can cure Arthur. The French and English translations of Geoffrey, Wace’s Brut and Layamon’s Brut, respectively from  and c.  to the mid-thirteenth century, make no mention of Morgan, though they are aware of the Avalon tradition. In Chrétien de Troyes’ romances Erec and Yvain, dating from c. –, Morgan is briefly mentioned as Arthur’s sister; this gives rise to an extended portrait in the German version of Erec by Hartmann von Aue, composed between  and . Chrétien is also responsible for the introduction of Lancelot to the Arthurian story as Guenevere’s lover. He is the protégé of a magical figure associated with water, as also in the Swiss-German Lanzelet (–) which probably draws on the same traditions as Chrétien. Thus the Lady of the Lake comes into existence. Around  a poet called Robert de Boron composed two poems about Joseph of Arimathea and Merlin. Between  and , a prose version of Joseph’s association with the Holy Grail (the Estoire de Graal), the history of Merlin (Estoire de Merlin), the adventures of Lancelot (Lancelot), the quest for the Holy Grail (La Queste del Saint Graal) and Arthur’s downfall (the Mort Artu) were combined into a massive cycle of prose romances known as the Vulgate or the Lancelot-Grail Cycle. The Vulgate Cycle gives in the Estoire Merlin the first full account of a young woman, here called Viviane, who brings about Merlin’s disappearance from the courtly world. Merlin’s incarceration is briefly mentioned in the Non-Cyclical Lancelot (–), an earlier version of the Lancelot incorporated in the Vulgate. Here the first conflation between Merlin’s beloved and the Lady of the Lake is made, a continuing association. The Vulgate Cycle also develops the role of Morgan le Fay. Shortly after the Vulgate Cycle came into existence, another cycle of Arthurian romances known as the Post-Vulgate Cycle (–) was composed. This now exists only in a fragmentary form, in several manuscripts in French, Spanish and Portuguese. The Post-Vulgate Cycle provides a different version of the Merlin-enclosure story and a unique example of Morgan’s plotting against her brother’s throne and life; it consists of the Estoire de Graal, an Estoire de Merlin, with a different continuation from what is found in the Vulgate (the Suite de Merlin), a Queste del Saint Graal and a Mort Artu. At around the

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same time, between  and , the older poetic version of the story of Tristan and Isolde was expanded into two distinct prose versions, collectively known as the Tristan en Prose. Tristan and King Mark of Cornwall became contemporaries of Arthur, facilitating greatly expanded adventures involving Tristan and the knights of the Round Table, in which Morgan figures as an enemy to chivalric practices. The Tristan en Prose was translated into several other languages, most notably the Italian La Tavola Ritonda (–), which includes a number of new adventures for the enchantresses. The Vulgate Cycle was known and read in its original French by the Frenchspeaking nobility of England. In the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, versions of parts of the Vulgate were translated into English, in poetic form (the fourteenth-century Stanzaic Morte Darthur) and in prose (for example, Arthur and Merlin, –; the Prose Merlin, c. ). The most important original work in English is the alliterative poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (c. –). In the s Thomas Malory made his great synthesis of French and English sources, the Morte Darthur, which became the canonical version for the English-speaking world. Besides these Arthurian romances there are a number of other texts in which Morgan and the other enchantresses appear. A series of French romances known as chansons de geste tell of chivalric adventure and supernatural happenings; in these Morgan appears as a quasi-supernatural figure, usually living in Avalon with Arthur. The hard-to-classify Prophesies de Merlin, a product of the s, continues the adventures of Morgan, the Lady of the Lake and a number of minor enchantresses.

A Note on Names The spelling of Arthurian names varies greatly across medieval and modern texts. I have regularized Morgan, Guenevere, the Lady of the Lake, Arthur, Gawain and most other Arthurian characters to the most familiar form, usually that found in Malory. The name of Merlin’s lover varies significantly between texts, and here I have kept the individual spellings. Modern retellings often use distinctive spellings for their characters; thus I have thought it expedient to note the different versions of Merlin’s lover, variant spellings of Guenevere, and that Morgan becomes Morgaine and Morgana in two of the most influential twentieth-century versions of her story.

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