King Arthur's Enchantresses. Morgan and her Sisters in Arthurian Tradition

King Arthur’s Enchantresses

King Arthur’s Enchantresses Morgan and Her Sisters in Arthurian Tradition   "K

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Published in  by I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd  Salem Rd, London    Fifth Avenue, New York   www.ibtauris.com In the United States and Canada distributed by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press,  Fifth Avenue, New York,   Copyright © Carolyne Larrington  The right of Carolyne Larrington to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,  All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.       (Hb)        (Hb) A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress catalog card: available Typeset in Van Dijck by illuminati, Grosmont, www.illuminatibooks.co.uk Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall

Contents

Acknowledgements

vii

Introduction





Magic and the Enchantress





Morgan and Arthur





Morgan and Chivalry





Morgan, Other Knights and Enchantresses





Viviane, the Damoiselle Cacheresse and the Lady of the Lake





The Queen of Orkney





Vivien and the Victorians





Morgan, Morgause and the Modern Age



Notes



Bibliography



List of Pictures and Sources



Index



Acknowledgements

T

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

I

  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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King Arthur’s Enchantresses

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



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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King Arthur’s Enchantresses

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



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



King Arthur’s Enchantresses

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.

><

Magic and the Enchantress

Morgan’s First Appearance

T

  biographical account of King Arthur appears as the centrepiece of the Latin Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain) composed by the Anglo-Welsh historian and bishop Geoffrey of Monmouth around . Surviving in  manuscripts, Geoffrey’s monumental pseudo-history was clearly a medieval international bestseller.1 Here Geoffrey introduces into literature the influential idea that Arthur does not die in his final battle, but instead is taken away to Avalon to be healed of his wounds.2 By contrast, when Arthur’s healer and soon-to-be sister, Morgan, makes her literary debut, it is in Geoffrey’s much less popular poem about Merlin, the Vita Merlini. Dating from around , it survives only in a single complete manuscript now in the British Library, and as a few fragments.3 Based on oral traditions the Vita depicts Merlin as an eccentric, magical figure, a sometime madman living with his sister in the forest. His magic is largely a matter of prophecy. When Morgen (as she is called in this text) appears towards the end of the poem, she is a fully-imagined yet mysterious figure. Merlin is wondering whether conditions in Britain are so bad that it is worth arranging for Arthur’s return. Telgesinus (the Welsh legendary figure Taliesin) recalls for Merlin how Arthur was transported to the island kingdom ruled by Morgan and her sisters: The Island of Apples gets its name ‘the Fortunate Island’ from the fact that it produces all manner of plants spontaneously. It needs no farmers to plough the fields. There is no cultivation of the land at all beyond that which is Nature’s



King Arthur’s Enchantresses work. It produces crops in abundance and grapes without help; and apple trees spring up from the short grass in its woods. … That is the place where nine sisters exercise a kindly rule over those who come to them from our land. The one who is first among them has greater skill in healing, as her beauty surpasses that of her sisters. Her name is Morgen, and she has learned the uses of all plants in curing the ills of the body. She knows, too, the art of changing her shape, of flying through the air, like Daedalus, on strange wings. At will, she is now at Brest, now at Chartres, now at Pavia; and at will she glides down from the sky onto your shores. They say she had taught astrology to her sisters – Moronoe, Mazoe, Gliten, Glitonea, Gliton, Tyronoe, and Thiten, – Thiten, famous for her lyre. It was there we took Arthur after the battle of Camlan, where he had been wounded. Barinthus was the steersman because of his knowledge of the seas and the stars of heaven. With him at the tiller of the ship, we arrived there with the prince; and Morgen received us with due honour. She put the king in her chamber on a golden bed, uncovered his wound with her noble hand and looked long at it. At length she said he could be cured if only he stayed with her a long while and accepted her treatment.4

Taliesin and Morgan are optimistic that Arthur will be cured (an optimism that disappears from later diagnoses of Arthur’s condition), but Merlin decides against recalling the king. Imagined in this long description as learned, kindly and beautiful, Morgan the enchantress steps on to the Arthurian stage here for the first time. Though many scholars have wished to see her as the literary descendant of a Celtic goddess, or at least as a wholly supernatural figure, Geoffrey’s portrayal actually owes almost nothing to the mythic traditions of Britain and Ireland.5 His Morgan is derived from classical sources – from the two most influential enchantresses of Greek mythology, Medea and Circe – and other details are evidently borrowed from learned tradition. Morgan’s sisters all have Greek or quasi-Greek names; their form and number probably recall the nine Muses, patrons of the different arts.6 Their island kingdom, where the climate is temperate, the soil fruitful and the inhabitants do not have to work, belongs to the familiar tradition of the Earthly Paradise. Geoffrey derives his account directly from the work of the sixth-century encyclopedia author Isidore of Seville; the Fortunate Isles are based on Isidore’s description of the Canary Islands.7 As listed, Morgan’s own powers combine those usually assigned to Circe and Medea, though Geoffrey emphasizes that Morgan, unlike the Greek enchantresses, uses her capabilities entirely for good: her skill in healing is particularly foregrounded. Morgan seems to have received a thorough training in the contemporary liberal arts tradition; when she leaves her kingdom it is to visit such established centres of ecclesiastical learning as Chartres and Pavia.

Magic and the Enchantress



Natural and Demonic Magic Is Geoffrey’s Morgan supernatural or human? Did she acquire her magical powers from the Other World, or is she simply an educated, mortal woman who has actively studied the knowledge she wields? No origin is given for her skills in translocation, shape-changing, astrological divination and healing; indeed Geoffrey seems deliberately to mystify the source of Morgan’s powers. It is tempting to regard her as at least semi-divine, since she lives far from ordinary human society on a distant island, resembling Circe, daughter of the Sun, and Medea’s aunt. But the Circe whom modern readers now know best from the Odyssey was not the one familiar to medieval audiences. Their notions of Circe and Medea were mediated through Latin authors, chiefly through Ovid, Virgil, Seneca and Hyginus.8 Moreover, these enchantresses had been modified by French learned tradition; Ovid’s Metamorphoses and his collection of letters by wronged women, the Heroides, were, by the twelfth century, popular school and university texts, exhaustively analysed and commented upon in order to make them compatible with Christian teaching.9 Early commentators were quick to point out the fictional nature of many of the magical achievements ascribed to Medea and Circe; as we shall see below, powers of resurrection and of shape-changing can only belong to God. Medea soon made her way into vernacular retellings of Greek history; a near contemporary with Geoffrey’s Morgan is the Medea of Benoît de Ste. Maure’s Roman de Troie, composed in  or shortly afterwards.10 Benoît strongly emphasises the acquired nature of Medea’s magic, a knowledge that is outlined in terms that match the medieval university arts curriculum. His portrait of Medea makes ample use of terms which later become staple in descriptions of Arthurian enchantresses: she has saveir (knowledge), engin (skill) and maistrie (mastery) and knows conjure e de sorcerie (magic and sorcery). She has studied the ‘arts’ (the seven subjects of the university curriculum) and is learned in astronomy and nigromance (necromancy).11 Examples of Medea’s powers listed by Benoît include changing day into night, making someone believe he is flying and causing rivers to run backwards.12 In the late twelfth century and early thirteenth centuries, scholars began to formulate a new view of magic. Following, in part, the rediscovery of Aristotle’s scientific writings, this new understanding might be described as pseudo-scientific. Natural things were thought to have inherent properties; they might be cold or hot, moist or dry, for example, and if you had a proper understanding of their qualities and applications you could achieve effects with



King Arthur’s Enchantresses

them which might seem wonderful to those who did not understand them. This kind of natural magic falls into the broader category of the ‘marvellous’: that which appears to be contrary to God’s law, but in fact obeys hidden laws. The contemporary writer Gervase of Tilbury explains that the marvellous is simply that which we do not yet have the learning to understand, but which, in contrast to the miraculous, is not produced by the supernatural: we generally call those things miracles which, being preternatural, we ascribe to divine power, as when a virgin gives birth … and those things marvels, which do not yield to our understanding, even when they be natural: in fact the inability to explain why a thing is so constitutes a marvel.13

Some medieval magic, particularly in literary contexts, is thus understood to be inexplicable rather than impossible. A corresponding rationalization is at work in the Post-Vulgate Suite de Merlin, where Merlin explains to the amazed Arthur that a damsel who apparently walks on water to bring Excalibur to him is actually supported by a submerged wooden bridge, a demystification which Malory omits.14 That magic must be subject to God’s laws which human magicians do not have the power to suspend implies that their knowledge is not supernatural. That it could indeed be acquired by all who applied themselves to the right books, or who were admitted to study with an acknowledged master, such as Merlin, is the dominant view held of magic in literary contexts, from the twelfth century onwards. Yet this more modern understanding of magic as natural science was not unopposed; ranged against it was a well-established theological argument that magic is always the province of demons. Both theologians and scientists envisaged the universe as a systematic place where there is an orderly hierarchy from the heavenly to the earthly, and where objects similar in form, or even in name, can affect each other (‘sympathetic magic’ in the influential formulation Frazer uses in The Golden Bough).15 If a magical adept manipulates such objects, demons who hover invisibly in a zone intermediate between heaven and earth will transmit the forces from the magical objects, bringing about effects elsewhere in the natural world or in the supernatural realm.16 If you know which stones, plants and animals can summon and control demons, particularly if you know the true names of demons, you can force them to perform magical tasks for you. This formulation of magic was long-standing in Christian thinking. As early as the second and third centuries, the theologian Tertullian declared that demons were the source of all magical knowledge in women; a century later Augustine maintained

Magic and the Enchantress



that magic depended on demonic involvement. Even where material objects naturally had innate powers, Augustine suggested that demonic forces were somewhere at work.17 Isidore of Seville elaborated the different categories of magic: divination (knowing the future, or what is happening elsewhere, or having hidden information about the past), enchantment (magic performed by words) and the use of magical objects, asserting that all these subtypes of magic work through the operation of demons.18 The theological argument for demonic involvement in magic was thus a well-established one, and had the advantage of explaining how magic could work at a distance through the operation of invisible, supernatural forces. Some Arthurian texts, as we shall see, adhere to or revive the theological conception of magic, making visible the intervention of demonic forces in achieving magical effects; a view of magical activity which has the effect of raising questions about its practioners.

Hartmann’s Feimurgân Demonic forces are explicitly said to be the sources of Morgan’s magical power in the next substantial portrait of her, coming some fifty years after Geoffrey’s Vita Merlini. Chrétien de Troyes’ earliest romance Erec et Enide followed emerging French and Anglo-French tradition by making Morgan Arthur’s sister; she is briefly mentioned when her lover, but not the lady herself, attends the wedding of Erec and Enide. Later when Erec is injured, he is treated with a salve made by Morgan which successfully cures him. At the end of the twelfth century the German poet Hartmann von Aue composed a version of Erec in which this healing becomes the cue for an elaborate account of Morgan, here called Feimurgân (Fairy Morgan), and her powers.19 It’s a description worth quoting at length: When she began to demonstrate her magic powers, she had very soon circumnavigated the world and come back again. … both in the air and on the earth she could hover at her ease, on the waves and beneath them. She was totally indifferent as to whether she lived in the fire or, just as much at her ease, in the dew. All this the lady could do. And when it took her fancy she could change a man into a bird or an animal. Thereafter she could quickly give him his own shape back. Mighty was she in magic and her life was greatly in defiance of God, for at her command were the birds in the wild, in the woods and fields, and what seems to me greatest, those evil spirits, that are called devils – they were all at her command. She was well capable of marvels for dragons had to bring from the air support in her affairs, as well as the fish in the sea. Moreover, she had kin deep in Hell: the Devil was her companion. He sent her aid, even from the



King Arthur’s Enchantresses fire, as much as she wanted. And whatever she would have from this earth, she took, without peril, in ample measure, all for herself. The earth bore no root, the power of which was not as familiar to her as the back of my hand is to me. Since Sibyl died and Erictho perished … [t]his earth never acquired a better mistress of magic arts than Feimurgân.20

Circe is the chief exemplar for Hartmann’s version of Morgan, again mediated through Ovid, Virgil and Hyginus.21 Like Circe, Feimurgân has herbal knowledge, the ability to walk on water, and, most distinctively, the power and inclination to turn men into animals. Passage through the different elements, including fire, transformation, and understanding of the medicinal qualities of plants are emphasized among Feimurgân’s talents.22 Although she is also directly compared to the hideous witch Erichtho in Lucan’s Pharsalia, who is a true necromancer, one who reanimates the dead in order to discover the future, Feimurgân is not said to practise this particular form of divination.23 Nor does she haunt graveyards and search widely throughout the world for the foul ingredients of her magic potions as Erichtho does; dragons and birds quickly bring her whatever she requires. The Sibyl and Erichtho represent respectively the seeress and the sorceress of classical tradition; both are conscripted by Lucan in the Pharsalia at different periods of crisis to predict the future of the endangered Roman polity. By associating Feimurgân with the authority of the Roman past, Hartmann demonstrates that she is a worthy successor to these figures of learned culture.24 The difficulty of representing the king’s sister as implicated in such activities ‘against Christ’s commandment’ is neutralized in this text by the fact that she is reported to have died a long time ago.25 Her particular legacy – a healing salve – does not require the invocation of demons in its application and thus its use presents no ethical problems for the injured Erec.

The Enchantress as Goddess Hartmann unequivocally calls Feimurgân a goddess. Given the range of powers she possesses, far beyond those of most thirteenth-century enchantresses, the epithet is not perhaps surprising. Geoffrey of Monmouth, as noted above, did not specify what kind of a being his Morgan is; those early medieval British historians who follow him are also vague on the matter. Although Gerald of Wales (c. –) says she is ‘imagined to be some kind of goddess’, and Gervase of Tilbury (writing between  and ) calls her ‘Morgan the fairy’, the two clerical authors ascribe the belief that Morgan is of supernatural

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origin to ‘credulous Britons’; a belief which they have no wish to endorse.26 Geoffrey’s Historia was quickly translated first into French by the Jersey author Wace, and then into English by Layamon. Wace says nothing more of Arthur’s end than is found in Geoffrey and makes no mention of Morgan. Layamon describes Argante, his Queen of Avalon, as an ‘elf’, a being whose status in post-Conquest Britain is highly debatable.27 Once historical and literary tradition makes Morgan into the king’s sister, possession of innate supernatural powers is by definition ruled out, otherwise Arthur would be expected to share them to the detriment of his heroic reputation. Thus romance tradition clearly excludes the possibility that Morgan may have divine status. Chrétien is circumspect in what he says about the king’s sister, simply calling her ‘Morgan the Wise’. The Vulgate Lancelot robustly debunks the notion of divinity: ‘many people (there was no dearth of fools at that time through the countryside) … called her Morgan the goddess’.28 In the fourteenth century, the epithet is attached to Morgan in English in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; here the comment follows closely on the Green Knight’s information that Morgan had an affair with Merlin. ‘Morgan þe goddes/ þerfore hit is hir name’, he says, implying, like Gerald and Gervase, that ‘goddess’ should be regarded as a nickname rather than as fact. The juxtaposition of Morgan and Merlin here suggests that it is the connection with Merlin that motivates the epithet; the Lancelot tells us that the ordinary people considered Merlin a god for his wisdom.29 Morgan’s supernatural status continues to be rumoured, but, after Hartmann, is never authoritatively endorsed by authors, nor indeed could a clerical author properly attribute divinity to her.30 We can, however, confidently ascribe a supernatural origin to the Lady of the Lake, who must originally have been a water fairy, similar to her forerunner in the Swiss-German Lanzelet (see Chapter ). The water fairy differs from the mermaid in that she has human form; she lives under the water in a courtly environment which differs little from the real world except by virtue of being hidden from it. Even in the earliest versions of the Lancelot, the authors are anxious to make clear that the Lady is no longer a supernatural figure. When the epithet ‘fairy’ is applied to the enchantresses, the implication is simply, as Laurence Harf-Lancner points out, that they are ‘endowed with magic powers’, not that they are inhabitants of the Other World.31 The other Arthurian enchantresses are also envisaged as human: Viviane, and her reflexes, Ninianne and Niviene, are said to be daughters of a king and their education in magic is shown in some detail.

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King Arthur’s Enchantresses The Lancelot gives a categorical explanation of the meaning of ‘fairy’: At that time, the word ‘fairy’ was used for all women who practised magic … [a]ccording to the Breton Chronicles, they knew the powers of words and stones and herbs, which allowed them to retain youth and beauty and enjoy whatever wealth they wished.32 All that dated from the time of Merlin, the English prophet, who possessed all the wisdom that can come from demons, which was why he was so feared by the Bretons and so revered that everyone called him a holy prophet and the ordinary people all called him their god.33

Merlin’s magic never entirely escapes from association with the demonic, even though he strives to use his knowledge for good ends, bringing about Arthur’s conception, orchestrating his rise to power and advising the inexperienced young king. Geoffrey had established in the Historia the belief that Merlin was fathered by a demon who preyed invisibly on Merlin’s virtuous mother.34 This tradition is further elaborated by Robert de Boron and the prose versions of his Merlin.35 Here devils deliberately plot Merlin’s conception as a response to the Incarnation of Christ, and a virtuous girl is chosen to be the baby’s mother in imitation of the Virgin. On the advice of her confessor Blaise, Merlin’s mother has her remarkable baby speedily baptised; the sacrament converts his demonic wisdom into a foreknowledge endorsed by God, while his occult knowledge of the past is the legacy of his devilish father. Since the enchantresses, at least in thirteenth-century texts, study with Merlin, the magic they practise also originates in the diabolical wisdom of Merlin’s paternal inheritance. Yet once transmitted through Merlin, whose soul had been saved by baptism, the wisdom loses its intrinsic link with the demonic. Relocated to the sphere of natural magic, it becomes the knowledge of ‘words and stones and herbs’, as the Lancelot defines it. Educated people in the romance world understand the origin of Merlin’s powers and offer him the proper respect due to a seer; those who, like the ‘credulous Britons’ cited by the historians, are ignorant of causes mistakenly conclude that Merlin must himself be divine and call him a ‘god’. Morgan is thus occasionally identified as a ‘goddess’ by the unlearned because of her association with the sage.

Studying Magic Literacy is an essential prerequisite for the acquisition of magic. Enchantresses not only learn from books but actively consult them in the course of magical performance. Morgan is said to be ‘reading her book’ when she conjures up

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demons in her magic contest with the Dame d’Avalon in the late-thirteenthcentury Prophesies de Merlin.36 In the Lancelot a Saxon – and therefore doubly alien – enchantress variously known as Canile or Gamille imprisons Arthur and many other knights in her castle at the Saxon Rock. Canile owes her power to her books, which she keeps safely within stout chests. A maiden whom she has imprisoned out of sexual jealousy reveals their importance to Arthur’s knights and so Kay burns them. When the enchantress learns that she has lost the source of her power she flings herself from the top of the Rock and is gravely injured.37 Viviane in the Merlin is perhaps the cleverest of the enchantresses; when she and Merlin first meet she is already able to read and write. Writing was often regarded as a secondary skill in a society where scribes were frequently employed to take dictation; though the enchantresses are often seen composing letters, they are rarely shown putting quill to parchment. Viviane knows how to write, however; she diligently records the first spell Merlin teaches her – how to create a body of water – while in the Lancelot her counterpart Ninianne writes everything Merlin teaches her ‘on parchment’ and inscribes two magic words on her loins so that Merlin cannot have sex with her against her will.38 Morgan is reported both in the Merlin and the Post-Vulgate Suite to have studied hard to gain both literacy and magical knowledge. In the Merlin she learns to read and write when, after her marriage, her husband, surprisingly perhaps, sends her to a convent for education. Morgan goes on to specialize in astronomie (which has elements of modern astronomy and astrology). For her wide knowledge, understanding of medicine and intelligence, she gains the byname la fée.39 At Arthur’s court, when Gawain and his brothers are knighted, Morgan, now characterized as ‘a good woman clerk’, meets Merlin and begins her study with him, learning ‘many wonders in astrology and necromancy’.40 Morgan’s progress in learning in this text is facilitated by her husband, King Neutres; access to knowledge even for an adult woman remains strictly under male control. That Neutres should want his wife to be literate would not have been regarded as unusual in an aristocratic marriage. A noble husband would often encourage his wife to learn to read, if she could not do so already, so that he could communicate privately with her from a distance. Morgan is characterized as illegitimate when she is introduced in the Merlin; this might explain her lack of educational advantages in girlhood. In the Suite de Merlin Morgan is already qualified in the seven disciplines of the medieval university curriculum when she makes Merlin’s acquaintance at

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the funeral of King Lot. Although she is pregnant with her son Yvain, Merlin falls in love with her and agrees to teach her; perhaps because pregnancy figures receptivity and potentiality, Morgan is an apt pupil.41 Orthodox convent knowledge is, of course, the preserve of virgins; now that Morgan is sexually initiated and willing, like Viviane in the Merlin, to exchange sexual satisfaction for magical knowledge, her education quickly progresses beyond the ordinary.42 Once she has acquired ‘the science and art of necromancy’, she becomes deeply afraid of Merlin, who loves her with a fol amor, the kind of passionate love which is not subject to courtly constraint. Morgan rejects Merlin, though in this text he remains an ally and helps her when one of her later schemes goes awry. The Prophesies de Merlin also supports the tradition that Morgan, the Dame d’Avalon and the Lady of the Lake all learn their craft from Merlin. In this text, Morgan rejoices at Merlin’s disappearance: now, she thinks, she is the most knowledgeable enchantress in the world.43 However, the Lady of the Lake is usually able to worst Morgan when the latter acts against her in the Prophesies; moreover the Dame d’Avalon, with the aid of magic rings from India, and an extra trick or two acquired from Merlin, wins a magic contest between Morgan and her friends, Sebile and the Queen of North Wales (see below). What did Morgan and the other enchantresses learn from Merlin? The term most usually employed in English and French is ingremancy/nigremancie, which gives us the modern word necromancy. In the medieval vernacular the word has lost its connection with the literal raising of the dead for divinatory purposes, in the manner memorably pursued by Erichtho in the Pharsalia, who gruesomely reanimates corpses. Nigremancy was reconstrued as containing the element niger, ‘black’, implying the darker side of magic arts, while ingremancy is emptied even of that association.44 Malory’s evil sorceress Hallewes, who plans to kill Lancelot and then embalm his body so that she can possess him for ever, tellingly signals that hers is a wholly sinister brand of magic when Malory tells us that she resides in the castle Nygurmous.45 Nevertheless, as Helen Cooper points out, skill in enchantment is generally conceived of as a neutral power in Arthurian romance tradition; capable of being used for good or evil ends, it has no necessary connection with the Devil.46 Exactly how enchantresses divine what will happen in the future, or, more frequently, what has happened in some distant location, is often obscure. In the Lancelot the Lady of the Lake knows that Lionel and Bors, Lancelot’s cousins, are being held prisoner by their enemy, king Claudas, but whether her information is gained by magical means or through normal processes of news-

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gathering is unclear.47 The Lady frequently discovers that Lancelot needs help without the aid of messengers, though she is never shown undertaking any divinatory rituals.48 In the Post-Vulgate Queste Morgan informs her brother about the fate and identity of his missing illegitimate son, Arthur the Less, though how she knows this is left unclear.49 In the Prophesies the Lady of the Lake’s fears that Morgan may persuade Merlin to ally himself with king Claudas against Lancelot are prompted not by magical insight, but rather by hearing the sounds of Morgan’s hunting party nearby in the forest.50 Divination tends to be reserved for resolving extreme difficulties of plot; where it is possible for an enchantress to learn something through natural means, messengers are usually employed. Astrology is the only divinatory method the texts discuss at length; in the Merlin the clerks who are charged with finding out why Vortigern’s tower repeatedly collapses are unable to discern the cause (fighting dragons in the pool under the foundations). The clerks’ astrological researches do lead them to the solution to the problem, Merlin himself, but they interpret their findings falsely and urge Merlin’s death. After he has solved the tower mystery, Merlin lectures the unfortunate clerks, pointing out that the truth had eluded them. Their foolish curiosity brought them a deceptive vision sent by Merlin’s demon father, who incited them to kill him. Merlin orders them to give up divination and to confess their past practice to a priest as a sin. When performed by those who are not ‘as good and pure and noble as you ought to be’, divination is a risky business, open to diabolical interference.51

Magic in Action One episode which demonstrates a range of different magical techniques comes early in the Lancelot. The Lady of the Lake determines to rescue Lancelot’s young cousins, Lionel and Bors, from imprisonment by their enemy Claudas, a rescue which is effected by the Lady’s damsel, Saraïde. In Plate  Saraïde is depicted setting out for Claudas’s castle with two greyhounds, who will figure significantly in her plans. First Saraïde makes a pungent appeal to public relations – Claudas, she says, will be more highly regarded by everyone, including the Lady, who pretends to be considering him as a possible suitor, if he lets Bors and Lionel out of prison to attend a feast. This will enable her to use her magical objects. During Claudas’s feast Saraïde places a garland of magic herbs on each boy’s head and attaches clasps with magic stones to their collars. The herbs make the boys

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want to behave outrageously: Lionel dashes his wine into Claudas’s face and, in an attack both violent and symbolic, he seizes and smashes Claudas’s crown. The magic clasps protect the boys from injury in the ensuing fight, in which Claudas’s son is killed. Saraïde then casts a shape-changing spell which makes the boys appear to be the two greyhounds which had accompanied her, while the greyhounds take on the appearance of children. They make good their escape from the fracas. News spreads that Claudas has attempted to kill the two boys; he is attacked and the ‘children’ rescued by the knight Pharian. At a safe distance from Claudas’s castle Saraïde lifts the spell on her greyhounds, turning them back into their rightful shape as boys. To Pharian’s consternation, the spell on the other ‘children’ he has rescued wears off at the same time, restoring the two greyhounds to their normal shape.52 This account combines shape-changing and the employment of naturally magical materials. Herbs and stones are imagined as invested with specific magical powers. Here the herb garlands influence emotions, in Lionel’s case amplifying a tendency he already possesses towards impetuosity, and the stones have physical effects, bestowing immunity from injury. Stones that confer invulnerability also ornament the magic scabbard which Arthur receives along with Excalibur in the Suite de Merlin and Malory.53 In the Lancelot a girl who has fallen in love with Lancelot complains that neither ‘herbal potions nor precious stones’ could have had enough talismanic force to protect her heart against the knight’s beauty.54 That stones could have such an effect is an idea not limited to the romances; many medieval manuscripts survive which list the protective and curative powers of the precious stones owned by the nobility. They were widely believed to be capable of detecting poison or of helping women in childbirth, for example.55

Healing Powers and their Perversion Plants and herbs are the main constituents of the healing salves with which, it is assumed, Morgan will cure Arthur in the Vita Merlini. Her skill in concocting ointments that heal both body and mind is emphasized in Chrétien’s Yvain, where, despite being told to use it sparingly, a damsel enthusiastically applies a whole pot of Morgan’s unguent to the romance’s deranged hero, Yvain, restoring his sanity. In Chrétien’s Erec Morgan’s salve heals Erec’s wounds sustained in battle.56 Nowhere is the debasement of Morgan’s magical powers in the later thirteenth century and beyond more clearly illustrated than in her employment

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of poison instead of healing in the story of Alexander the Orphan. Chiefly in pursuit of her own erotic ends, Morgan anoints Alexander’s wounds with a salve which makes them much worse; on extracting a promise from the wounded knight that he will do anything she asks, she treats the wounds with a healing ointment, drugs him and takes him off Image not available to another castle where she intends to make him her lover.57 Morgan also employs drugs to further her plots in the Lancelot. In Figure . we see Lancelot has obediently returned to Morgan’s custody after rescuing Gawain from the Dolorous Tower (an adventure discussed in Chapter ). Morgan administers . . Morgan steals a herb called soporite, which enables her to Lancelot’s magic ring steal the enchantment-detecting ring given to Lancelot by the Lady of the Lake. Failing to break Lancelot’s will, Morgan later drugs his wine to produce terrifying hallucinatory dreams in which he sees the queen being unfaithful to him with another lover. In a later captivity Morgan blows a powder into Lancelot’s nose, making him so ill that he cannot leave her castle.58 In contrast to Morgan’s sinister pharmaceuticals, the Lady of the Lake possesses various salves, with which she cures Lancelot from his accesses of madness; her psychological understanding of the different crises of love, honour and identity which deprive Lancelot of his reason is as efficacious as her herbal knowledge to the restoration of the hero’s health.59

Magical Objects Arthurian romances abound with magical objects, obscure in origin and marvellous in their effects. Swords which can only be drawn by the destined bearer, or given by mysterious figures, rings which function as detectors for traces of enchantment in a puzzling situation, or which confer invisibility, are not only frequent in Arthurian narratives, but are very often the gift or creation of women.60 Other artefacts include a magic boat, which transports Accolon, Uriens and Arthur to the adventure that ends in Accolon’s death

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and Arthur’s realization of Morgan’s treachery.61 One of the most memorable creations of malign magic is the cloak that Morgan sends to Arthur in the Suite de Merlin and Malory, designed to burn to ashes whoever puts it on.62 Another widely attested object is Morgan’s magic horn, from which no unfaithful woman can drink without spilling. This she sends to Camelot in order to shame Guenevere, but it is rerouted by Lamerok to CornImage not available wall, where it causes outrage at the court of King Mark. The horn reveals the adultery not only of his queen Iseult, but the infidelity of almost every other lady present.63 Figure . shows Iseult, hand defiantly on hip, drinking from the horn; King Mark, left, with a wave of his hand seems to be demonstrating his confidence in his wife’s virtue. The Prophesies de Merlin feature a range of exotic . . Iseult drinks magical devices, including a spectacular flying from the magic horn boat, which transports the damsel Eglantine back from India, a region that, from the earliest tales of Alexander’s journey there, was regarded in the West as the source of all sorts of marvels.64 Further mysterious objects – magic chessboards, singing birds or talking heads – are frequently controlled by women and used to test knightly virtue; their symbolic value varies. One highly significant magic object is the split shield which the Lady of the Lake sends to Guenevere. Not only does the split close up once Lancelot and the queen have consummated their love; the shield itself, emblematic of the relationship, is able to heal Lancelot from madness, an example of ‘the subordination of magic to psychology’ noted by Kieckhefer.65 Marvellous shields tend to symbolize psychological states: the confidence imparted to Lancelot by the Lady of the Lake’s maternal affection or the love of Guenevere. Figure . shows the Lady hanging the split shield around Lancelot’s neck; though this restores his reason, he becomes crazed again if the shield is removed. In the right-hand side of the miniature, the Lady anoints him with a healing salve, which maintains his recovery. Magic objects thus have a double value; they may be talismanic, warding off evil, or they may challenge and celebrate the virtue of those who encounter them. Only the greatest lover in the world – Lancelot of course

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. . Lancelot’s madness is healed by the Lady of the Lake’s shield; the Lady anoints him with healing unguent

– can win when he plays against the magic chessboard.66 Helen Cooper notes that magic often fails or misfires in the romances. Heroes achieve success in spite of magical objects deployed against them; knightly use of magic confers an unfair advantage on them, detracting from their own chivalric capabilities.67 Thus the scope of protective magic is limited by considerations of honour; although Nenyve, Malory’s name for the woman who incarcerates Merlin, arranges matters so that her husband Pelleas ‘was never slayne by her dayes’, enchantresses don’t generally use their magic to make their lovers or protégés invulnerable or to enhance their fighting skills.68 Once Arthur’s invulnerability-conferring scabbard has been used by Merlin as an object lesson in not judging value by appearance, it has to be destroyed in order to remove its unfair advantage.69

Shape-changing Shape-changing, transforming oneself and others, is a skill inherited by the medieval enchantresses from Circe. Although Isidore of Seville seems to have accepted Circe’s ability as a matter of historical record, Kieckhefer notes that the churchman Rabanus Maurus, writing in the early ninth century, argues strongly that only God can transform his creatures from one species into another.70 The idea that the transformation of substance is exclusively the province of the divine, particularly of course the changing of bread into flesh and wine into blood at the heart of the Eucharist, is one which caused profound anxiety in the twelfth century. Caroline Bynum recounts an anecdote from Gerald of Wales which demonstrates contemporary preoccupation with the

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question of what you really are when magically transformed. When a priest encounters a couple of werewolves in Ireland, the male wolf tears open his dying mate’s side to prove that there really is a human under the hairy pelt, and so she may legitimately receive the last rites.71 When Saraïde transforms Lionel and Bors into greyhounds and the greyhounds into boys, the spell operates only at the level of appearance and illusion. Though Lionel and Bors look like greyhounds to all other spectators, Saraïde seems to perceive them still as having human shape, to the extent that the enchanted children are rather awkwardly carried off on horseback rather than running swiftly alongside the horses in their transformed canine shapes.72 Similarly, when Morgan, fleeing Arthur, turns herself and her companions into stones, the effect is so realistic that Arthur concludes that she really has been petrified, and that her fate must be a divine punishment since only God possesses such transformative power.73 Shape-changed beings retain human subjectivity and rationality; even as a stone Morgan knows when the danger from Arthur has passed and it is safe to resume her normal form. In the Merlin Gawain is forced to exchange shapes with the Dwarf Knight, Evadeam, for the crime of failing to greet a woman who is probably Viviane; he swiftly learns the price of uncourtly behaviour. Not only does he now regard himself as a ‘loathsome and misshapen thing’, people who meet him revile him on account of his appearance. When he passes a further test of courtliness – rescuing the same lady from an apparent rape – the spell is lifted. Gawain subsequently swears to serve ladies whenever they need help, and never to fail to greet them (this is one of a number of tales which give a motivation for Gawain’s especial dedication to the service of women). Luckily the Dwarf Knight retains a normal human shape even after the spell on Gawain is lifted. Gawain’s transformation is triggered by his failure to acknowledge a woman apparently below him in rank; his time as a dwarf enables him to experience at first hand what it is like to have low social status and to be the butt of scorn and cruelty.74

Enclosure Enclosure: bounding or confining men who have put themselves in the enchantress’s power is an important characteristic of all three major enchantresses. Viviane/Niviene encloses Merlin in locations varying from a tower of air to a marble tomb. Her intention in the earliest version is to keep her lover with

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her, to prevent him from maintaining the role of counsellor at Arthur’s court, which she regards as a distraction from the pleasure they enjoy together. Later versions see Niviene fatally enclosing Merlin within a tomb to stop him trying to take her virginity, or to prevent him threatening her other interest: the protection of Lancelot and his cousins.75 Morgan’s bravura magical achievement, the Val sans Retour, is a pleasant retreat, but, once within, no knight who has ever been unfaithful to his lady can escape from it.76 Morgan, her fellow enchantresses, Sedile or Sebile, the queens of Sorestan and North Wales, and other sorceresses, have castles in which they confine, among others, Lancelot, Alexander the Orphan, Tristan, Arthur, and, in the Tristan en Prose and related texts, Melyodas, Tristan’s father. These confinements are usually erotically motivated; sexual jealousy underlies another type of confinement, the placing of beautiful female rivals in boiling water (a lady at Corbenic in Malory), icy water (La Ponzela Gaia, Morgan’s daughter in Italian tradition), or a magically produced combination of fire and ice (Morgan’s rival for the lover whose infidelity motivates the Val sans Retour).77 The Lady of the Lake’s enchanted manor beneath the lake is an exception to these imprisoning enclosures. Her confinement of Lancelot and his cousins there in their infancy preserves their lives and provides a gentle but thorough introduction to courtly life, removed from the complexities of feudal politics and the murderous intentions of their hereditary enemy, Claudas. Protective and maternal, the manor is a safe space for young men to grow to adulthood, and they are freely released from it when they are ready to take up arms.78

The Return of the Demonic In the twelfth- and early-thirteenth-century Arthurian romances, the enchantresses’ magic is normally depicted as learned and neutral; if their clerical authors imagined that demons were at work in the complex set pieces of the rescue of Bors and Lionel, or the creation of the Val sans Retour, those demons remain hidden. The Prophesies de Merlin occasionally makes explicit the role of the demonic in magic, partly because its focus on Merlin explores the varying implications of his paternity, baptism, lecherous behaviour and chances of salvation. Later in the Prophesies in an entertainingly comic episode Morgan and her fellow enchantresses, Sebile and the Queen of North Wales, are challenged by the Dame d’Avalon to participate in a magic competition. The moves in the competition make demonic involvement in enchantment clearly

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visible. Via Eglantine and her flying boat the Dame d’Avalon has acquired some magical items from India, which she invites her fellow-enchantresses to come to inspect. These include one magic ring which compels people to give its wearer anything she asks for, and another which confers invisibility.79 Sebile and the Queen of North Wales arrive first at the Dame’s home; unleashing her magical powers, the queen makes the castle shake, and a shower of swords rains down upon it. Sebile makes the castle appear to be on fire. The Dame puts on her ring and forces her visitors to take their clothes off. A third ring arrests all enchantments and makes the ladies aware that they are naked; ‘no need to ask if they were ashamed’, comments the narrator.80 Two damsels bring clothes for the discomfited enchantresses, and they readily concede the Dame’s superiority; ‘you are the most powerful lady in the world, and nothing can endure against you’, admits Sebile.81 Hearing of the other enchantresses’ failure, Morgan is confident that she can do better. She calls up ‘a legion of demons from hell’ who appear in the form of birds and dragons; these carry the Dame d’Avalon to the top of a tower. The Dame is temporarily alarmed, but she recognizes that Morgan, busily consulting a tome of magic, is responsible. When the Dame forces Morgan to remove her clothes, a demon takes them to the top of the tower. Morgan is shamed; her nakedness reveals physical decrepitude, her sagging breasts and the skin of her belly drooping to the ground. When the Dame expresses surprise that Morgan has been successful in bedding handsome knights, she admits that her apparent beauty is maintained by anointing with magical unguents.82 As a final coup, the Dame d’Avalon aims fire ‘from between her legs’ at Morgan’s clothes on the top of the tower and reduces them to ashes, a trick she says Merlin taught her when she gave him her virginity. The Dame has exchanged her physical integrity for a magical skill with distinctly hellish overtones; her vagina has literally become the burning pit invoked in clerical misogynist attacks on female sexuality. The demons who are usually carefully effaced in other thirteenth-century texts are here revealed as the agents of the magical effects which the more powerful and malign enchantresses use.83 Morgan’s intimate link with the diabolical is well illustrated in a scene in the Post-Vulgate Queste where Lancelot has a vision of hell. Here he sees Morgan naked except for a wolf’s pelt, symbolic of rapacity and unnaturalness. A thousand devils are tormenting the enchantress, but she is still able to command them to seize Lancelot, naming him as a knight in their service. They take him to see Guenevere in torment, ‘her tongue hanging out of her

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mouth, and she was burning as brightly as if she were a fat candle’.84 Queen and enchantress are both punished in hell for their sins, but the diabolical implications of earthly magic are underlined by Morgan’s continuing ability to control demons in the afterlife, just as she had forced them to carry out her will during her mortal existence.

The Price of Magic Magical knowledge has its costs, not only in the next world if used for evil purposes, but in this world too. Morgan pays a substantial price for her magic. In the Dame d’Avalon’s magic contest, the text draws on a well-established habit of misogynist thinking: satirizing female unattractiveness. Women seek to camouflage their ugliness, misleading those men who believe that their ladies possess genuine beauty, as the revelation of Morgan’s true physical decrepitude makes clear.85 Morgan admits to using enchantment as a kind of super-cosmetic, a deceptive version of the enchantress’s healing salves, to conceal both the ravages of time and the physical toll exacted by magic. At the inception of her affair with Guenevere’s young relative Guiomar in the Merlin, Morgan is described in some detail: This Morgan was a young lady, very cheerful and merry, but her face was very somber; she had a rounded build, not too thin and not too plump. She was quite clever and comely in body and in features; she stood straight and was wonderfully pleasing … she had the fairest head of any suited for a woman, the most beautiful hands and wondrously well-made shoulders. … Her skin was softer than millet.86

Neither the conventional blazon of ideal female beauty, nor a match for the strikingly ugly depiction of Morgan found in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (see below), this is an unusually individualized portrait. The young woman’s general attractiveness is noted, the sombreness of her demeanour hints that there is more to her than meets the eye, but her social charm and seductiveness are highlighted. In the Lancelot she is said to take after her father, the Duke of Cornwall, in ugliness; she is also ‘so lustful and wanton, that a looser woman could not have been found’.87 The Suite de Merlin introduces the young woman with a warning portrait: Morgan took the prize for beauty over all who were there that day. Unquestionably she was a beautiful girl up to the time she began to learn enchantments



King Arthur’s Enchantresses and magic charms; but once the enemy entered her and she was inspired with sensuality and the devil, she lost her beauty so completely that she became very ugly, nor did anyone think her beautiful after that, unless he was under a spell.88

That contact with demons destroys beauty explains, as Tolkien and Gordon point out, the portrait of Morgan as a crone in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.89 Here Morgan is depicted as wrinkled, squat and ugly while her brother is still in the first flush of youth. Her lack of erotic appeal in the poem makes her enchantments more efficacious though; her age and ugliness encourage both Gawain and the poem’s audience to underestimate her central role in the plot. In Italian tradition and in those chansons de geste where she remains the mistress of Avalon, Morgan remains a byword for beauty, often compared with Iseult and the famous romance heroine Blancheflor, but in the later thirteenthcentury romances her erotic satisfaction frequently requires the employment of subterfuge in a series of manoeuvres which tend not to succeed.90 Although none of the other enchantresses is depicted as ugly in the way that Morgan is, they tend to be frustrated in the sexual domain, except in their dealings with Merlin. Sebile, the Queen of Sorestan, and, in Malory, also the Queen of Estlond, are roundly rebuffed by Lancelot when the Queen of Sorestan instigates his capture and demands that he choose one of his jailors as his lover. In the Lancelot the captive knight refuses point-blank.91 In Malory’s version, the enchantresses identify themselves to him, enabling Lancelot’s rejection on the grounds of character rather than ugliness.92 In the Prophesies Sebile, the Queen of North Wales and Morgan fall out over the knight Bielengier the handsome; when he eventually escapes with one of Morgan’s damsels, Sebile attacks Morgan savagely. Poor Sebile’s lack of erotic success is a running joke in the text.93 Beauty, even magically enhanced, is not enough for these enchantresses to win the prize of lasting love. Alexander the Orphan contemplates – if only rhetorically – castrating himself rather than succumbing to Morgan’s sexual desire.94 The enchantresses’ erotic failure is not only the result of their deficiency in beauty and character, but also because they will not conform to normative ideas of sexual prerogative. Women are simply not expected to invite knights into their beds, as we shall see in Chapter . Nenyve’s exceptionalism is flagged when she chooses Pelleas to be her lover in Malory. As Heng argues, she effectively wins her lover from her rival, Ettard, just as knights are forced to cede their ladies to the victors when they are defeated in battle.95

Magic and the Enchantress

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Conclusion Magic in medieval Arthurian texts has many different meanings, and its practitioners play a range of roles. At one level magic symbolizes women’s power over men: it can indicate women’s erotic desire and their desirability, their wish to engage intimately with men, or their maternal protectiveness. Women’s rhetorical skill – the use of words as weapons and their ability to persuade men to follow a different agenda from the general aims of Arthurian chivalric society – is also suggested by enchantment. The enchantresses’ magic is usually represented as learned from books; they know the true names and qualities of objects, the facts about what has happened in the past or is happening elsewhere. They can use their knowledge to change, if only temporarily, the appearance and operation of the romance world in which they move. But they are always constrained by the power of God; in the Arthurian world they cannot make rivers run backwards or bring about a permanent change of human into beast. Though some authors see the enchantresses as trafficking with demons, this aspect is usually kept below the level of the text; the importance of the Lady of the Lake as Lancelot’s protector in the Arthurian world maintains the general respectability of magic. When Morgan and her cronies are regarded by their servants as consorting with demons, this reversion to the theological model of magic is part of the later thirteenth century’s blackening of the character of Geoffrey’s kindly healer. This depreciation in Morgan’s character is most likely a response to the prominence of Lancelot and his protector in French romance. Morgan’s magic is capable of rehabilitation in later texts and in Italian tradition, as we shall see in later chapters; where Lancelot is sidelined she regains her original benevolent role as healer and nurturer. The courtly audience of the Arthurian texts were familiar with herbal remedies and amulets in their own lives; they knew the virtues of protective stones and they enjoyed conjuring, sleight of hand and the antics of automata in courtly spectacle, just as they believed that astrological knowledge permitted a limited knowledge of the future.96 Yet that audience also took pleasure in the marvellous, recognizing it both as fictional and yet as inherently rulegoverned, always, ultimately, under the control of God. Magic moves easily between the known and the fictional world; at the same time as it mystifies its victims, it draws its audience’s attention to the complex processes at work in the courtly world. As modern readers we can understand magic in a variety

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King Arthur’s Enchantresses

of ways at once: as figuring psychological processes, signalling technological advances or invoking the exoticism of the east. Yet whatever the function of magic within the texts, as practised by the enchantresses, it cannot escape from central and contemporary questions about gender and power.

><

Morgan and Arthur

W

 Morgan becomes Arthur’s sister, or half-sister, the course of literary history changes. Étienne de Rouen, not perhaps entirely seriously, instigates this development in his Draco Normannicus (from around ); he little foresaw the consequences of inserting Morgan into Arthur’s family. Étienne simply remarks, ‘Here Morgan the eternal nymph receives her brother, cares for him and feeds him, heals him and make him immortal.’ Chrétien de Troyes soon follows him in Erec.1 Although chroniclers are slower to claim kinship between the two, there is no going back so far as romance tradition is concerned. The brother–sister bond is one of the most significant in women’s lives; a relationship which lasts as long as life itself, it places Morgan in an unparalleled position of intimacy with her brother. Becoming Arthur’s sister will eventually entail a move away from Avalon and the Fortunate Isles into the heart of the Arthurian court. Though she will later be forced to retreat into the castles she holds in the vast forests of the Arthurian realm, Morgan’s bond with Arthur is never undone and she always presides over his passing from this world. As Arthur’s sister, Morgan acquires other ties, notably the prickly relationship with her sister-in-law Guenevere, considered in this chapter. She also gains another sister, the Queen of Orkney, who is the subject of Chapter .

Brothers and Sisters What are the implications of the brother–sister relationship for Arthur and Morgan? Until recently, psychologists and psychoanalysts neglected sibling

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King Arthur’s Enchantresses

relationships in favour of parent–child bonds.2 Nevertheless there has always been a strong common-sense understanding of the brother–sister tie, a realization that the relationship is often a highly ambivalent one. Sibling rivalry, the expression of jealousy and hostility both at the toddler stage and between adults, is well recognized; traditional narrative – folk tales, fairy tales and ballads – frequently depicts brothers contending with one another for worldly success or sisters striving to win the highest-status husband. Less prominent in these stories, but amply borne out by some folk tales and by psychological research, is the existence of powerful sibling solidarity. The psychologists Bank and Kahn note how ‘loyalty is a major theme or dimension of sibling relationships’, and, importantly, that ‘it can coexist with rivalry, conflict, and competition’.3 Views of brother–sister relationships tend to be less stereotyped: the sister, especially if older, is usually figured as nurturing, while brothers are strongly protective of their sister’s honour. Brothers and sisters can be profoundly loyal to one another in ways which marriage does nothing to alter, but there may also be jealousies over power and status, magnified by women’s habitually inferior social position. At one extreme of the brother–sister relationship lies repressed – or even acted-out – incestuous desire, a motif which frequently recurs in traditional narratives; while at the other extreme lies murderous hatred, especially if a sister’s loyalty to her birth-family has been realigned by marriage or romantic passion.4 Freud rarely comments on the relationship, but he does note how strongly sibling aggression is repressed; ‘in none of my women patients … have I failed to come upon this dream of the death of a brother or sister, which tallies with an increase in hostility’.5 Between them Arthur and his two sisters explore the extremes of the sibling bond; with one sister he commits incest, while the other sister, in the Post-Vulgate Suite de Merlin, attempts to murder him. In most texts Morgan maintains a steady antipathy for her brother’s wife, ultimately coming to threaten the whole system of chivalry, which is Arthur’s proudest achievement. Yet, whatever the conflict between the two, from the early thirteenth century onwards, Morgan is always a comforting presence on the barge that bears Arthur away from his last battle, whether his destination is the healing sanctuary of Avalon, or his final resting place, the tomb at Glastonbury. However close they might be in childhood, noble medieval siblings were usually separated when they married. In a society where a primary aim of marriage was the forging of political alliances, and one’s spouse need by no

Morgan and Arthur

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means be someone that one particularly liked, the established ties between brother and sister often remained powerful. Brothers might marry off their sisters strategically: thus Arthur’s sisters’ marriages to his principal opponents in the struggle for the throne turn out to be crucial. In the Estoire Merlin, Arthur’s ultimate victory over his most powerful opponent Lot is underscored by his earlier sexual conquest of Lot’s wife, Arthur’s half-sister. Arthur’s sisters successfully redirect their sons’ loyalties towards their uncle and away from their filial obligation to support their fathers against Arthur, precisely because they are convinced of the importance of the brother–sister – or sister’s son – bond.6 Once Morgan joins Arthur’s family, authors begin to explore socially approved sisterly behaviour such as loyalty and nurturing, but the move also offers scope for more dramatic depictions of political jealousy and murderous hatred. When texts become interested in sibling relationships, other kinds of social bond are often seen in a new light. A sister’s first loyalty to her birth family may be overridden by new ties to husband or lover. If a woman acts with her lover or husband against her family she risks being viewed as treacherous; even the lover is sometimes appalled by his lady’s readiness to transfer her loyalties to benefit his interests. In medieval courtly society, the most important relationships are homosocial relations: those which hold between men, between king and knight, or between brother-knights. At the same time a knight must love a lady if he is to be regarded as a mature adult with a fully formed heterosexual identity. Bonds between men are often cemented by the exchange of women: daughters or sisters are married off to political allies or friends. At the end of Malory’s ‘Tale of Sir Gareth’, Gareth marries the lady Lyonesse, whom he has saved from a besieging knight; his brother Gaheris marries her sister Lynette and another brother Agravain marries a convenient cousin (though none of these women ever reappears in the Morte Darthur).7 Women do not always guarantee male social bonds though; they can be disruptive and uncooperative. Acceptance of the roles of mother, sister or daughter tends to restrict the freedom of the enchantress to act as she pleases. If she is to maintain her liberty to exercise those powers of literacy and enchantment that we saw her acquire in Chapter , she finally has to renounce family and marital bonds in favour of a freely chosen and loving relationship, usually governed by the code of fin’amors. If she is to exercise agency in her private affairs, she will also have to withdraw from normal courtly society. Thus she risks scandal and is often viewed as disruptive to the smooth running of the chivalric system.

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King Arthur’s Enchantresses

Arthur’s Multiple Sisters Arthur already had at least one sister before Morgan enters the family in the last third of the twelfth century. In Historia Regum Britanniae, Geoffrey of Monmouth registers Anna as Arthur’s younger sister, married to King Lot of Orkney, and mother of Gawain and Mordred. Another sister is said by Geoffrey to be the mother of Hoel of Brittany.8 Following Geoffrey, and particularly in the chronicle tradition, alliances between Arthur and other kings are often identified as brother-in-law relationships; an anonymous sister is invented to guarantee the men’s bond.9 So some of the most prominent knights in romance tradition – Galescalain, Cador, Yvain and Perceval – all acquire different Arthurian sisters as mothers in the Estoire Merlin. The sister’s son relationship, traditionally a close and privileged one in Celtic and Germanic heroic society, emphasises the nephews’ intimacy with the king.10 As late as the mid-fourteenth century, Gawain modestly notes in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight that his only virtue is that Arthur’s blood runs in his body. That the blood he shares with Arthur turns out also to be the blood of Morgan is a revelation which will impact forcefully upon Gawain towards the end of the poem.11 Rachel Bromwich notes how Yvain, a long-established figure in British tradition, suddenly in the Merlin gains the ‘highly advantageous status of becoming Arthur’s sister’s son’, through a newly invented kin relation with Morgan.12 While Yvain has always been the son of Uriens, that king’s ill-fated acquisition of Morgan as his wife is still unsettled in the early thirteenth century. In the Livre d’Artus, for example, Uriens is noted as married to a blameless Arthurian sister called Hermesan, as he is also in the slightly later Middle English Of Arthour and Merlin. Arthurian sisters multiply wildly in the Merlin as its author(s) try to reconcile varying traditions. Madeline Blaess suggests that during the early thirteenth century the sister’s son relationship becomes culturally less important, and so there is correspondingly less need for prominent knights to be allied to Arthur through blood. Arthur’s sisters are culled; only two significant characters survive who are normally regarded as Arthur’s maternal half-sisters: the Queen of Orkney and Morgan. Each sister is married off, before their brother’s rise to power, to an enemy of Arthur against whom he battles to secure his throne; each brother-in-law is eventually neutralized, either by death or by capitulation to Arthur’s force majeure. At the knighting of Gawain and his brothers in the Merlin, the Queen of Orkney, Morgan and Arthur meet one another; showing exemplary sibling affection, ‘they rejoiced with great

Morgan and Arthur

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gladness, because they had not been together for some time. And they kissed one another like brothers and sisters.’13

Morgan, Arthur and Accolon The splendid sibling closeness of the Merlin does not last. In the Post-Vulgate Suite, Arthur’s relations with both sisters become problematic. Lot’s wife has an incestuous affair with her brother before they are aware of the blood tie between them. Morgan, meanwhile, comes to hate her brother, and acts against him in a dramatic episode found only in the Suite de Merlin and in Malory, who uses the earlier text as his source. The Suite’s version is more complex than Malory’s; it has an anticipatory episode in which Morgan betrays her brother’s trust for the first time, the main narrative is broken up by the conclusion of the Niviene–Merlin story (see Chapter ), and there is a sequel in which Morgan makes a direct attempt on Arthur’s life. Morgan’s doomed revolt against brother and husband in the Suite particularly captured the interest of the illustrator of one of the two manuscripts which preserve the work. Some of his illustrations are reproduced below.14 After receiving the sword Excalibur from the damsel of the enchanted lake, together with a richly jewelled scabbard, Arthur is asked by Merlin which he values more highly: sword or scabbard. Arthur chooses the masculine symbol of martial prowess, but Merlin – as so often, trying to teach Arthur not to judge by appearances – reveals that the scabbard, a feminine symbol with regenerative powers, has the property of rendering its wearer immune to blood loss.15 Arthur gives the scabbard to his sister for safekeeping, stating explicitly that he trusts her more than anyone else in the world. At the urging of an unnamed lover, Morgan has the scabbard counterfeited by a craftsman, whom she subsequently has killed. She intends to give her lover the scabbard, but, startled by the sound of Arthur approaching her chamber, Morgan confuses the fake with the real scabbard and accidentally gives her lover the wrong one. Consequently he is injured in his next battle; believing he has been double-crossed, he betrays Morgan to Arthur. Only the intervention of Merlin and Morgan’s speedy departure from court save her from Arthur’s anger; the tattling lover is executed by the king. The scabbard is returned to Morgan, so that later, when her plot to promote another lover, Accolon, unfolds, she already has possession of true and false scabbards and now only needs a counterfeit Excalibur.16



King Arthur’s Enchantresses

Morgan’s lover Accolon is a pre-eminent knight, but her bemused dupe in a complex intrigue for power. Arthur, Morgan’s husband Uriens and Accolon are out hunting one day when they become separated from the rest of the hunting party while in pursuit of a hart (seen running up the inside of the O in Plate ). The animal is chased to the edge of a body of water and killed; next a richly equipped ship appears. The men embark and are served a delicious feast by beautiful young women. Each man goes to bed in a separate chamber and each awakens to find himself elsewhere: Uriens is with his wife in the marital bed, Arthur is confined in a dungeon and Accolon finds himself in the forest. Magic is clearly at work; harts often appear in the French genre of Breton lai to lead the intended victims of enchantment into marginal territories where magic operates freely.17 When Accolon awakens by a fountain in a meadow in the forest, he suspects from this typical fairy scenario that the damsels have enchanted him, a suspicion which triggers a highly uncourtly misogynist diatribe. A dwarf interrupts Accolon, bringing him both Excalibur and greetings from Morgan. The appearance of the dwarf (shown here in Plate  as rather sizeable) makes graphic Accolon’s lapse into the kind of uncourtly behaviour with which dwarfs are associated in romance. The forest birds look on with concern as Accolon takes the ill-fated weapon; that one bird is an owl portends a disastrous outcome to Accolon’s combat. Meanwhile Arthur learns that he can only escape from his dungeon and win freedom for the Round Table knights already incarcerated in it if he agrees to fight against a champion in a dispute between two brothers about the inheritance of a certain manor. His opponent proves to be Accolon, armed with Excalibur and the genuine magic scabbard, while Arthur is provided by Morgan with the ineffectual replicas. Plate  shows, within an M for Morgue, on the left Arthur agreeing to take up the quarrel, and on the right Morgan telling the younger brother, a party to the inheritance dispute, that Accolon will fight on his behalf. Neither champion offers his name before combat begins; the battle is hardfought in strict conformity to prevailing chivalric ethics. Despite the lack of his talismans Arthur finds himself on the verge of defeat only because his sword has broken.18 Niviene (the Lady of the Lake in this text), who has just arrived at the field of combat, intervenes, freezing Accolon’s arm in mid-stroke so that he drops Excalibur. Recognising his own sword, Arthur seizes it and

Morgan and Arthur



the scabbard. Accolon, severely wounded, now bleeds freely. When he discovers the identity of his opponent, Accolon claims that he would never knowingly have fought against his king. Although he turns out to be perfectly au fait with Morgan’s plot to overthrow her brother, murder her husband and put her lover on the throne, Accolon would not, he claims, have cooperated with her treacherous plan. King and knight refuse to fight further once they have exchanged names, and in the Suite they are reconciled. The primary male bond between king and knight proves stronger than love or ambition on Accolon’s part, but the reconciliation is short-lived; Accolon dies of his wounds.19 Malory’s account of the enchantment and the fight is tautly told, significantly abbreviating the Suite’s version. Malory’s Accolon makes fewer excuses for himself; he recognises that his mistress’s plan to depose Arthur and place him on the throne will fail, not because of his reluctance to betray his lord, but because of his injuries. Arthur responds by pronouncing him a traitor, but he quickly offers Accolon an excuse by suggesting that the knight has been coerced by magic, rather than deluded by love; ‘my sistir Morgan le Fay by hir false crauftis made the to agré to hir fals lustes’, he proposes. Arthur is furious with Morgan, but he is also deeply grief-stricken; ‘God knowyth I have honoured hir and worshipped hir more than all my kyn, and more have I trusted hir than my wyff and all my kyn aftir’, he laments. The insistence on kinship and its obligations, and in particular the reiteration of my sistir, hir brothir throughout Malory’s retelling, is noteworthy.20 Malory also emphasises the fact that, although he is gravely wounded, Arthur pauses to dispense justice. He deprives Damas, whose champion he has been, of the manor for which the brothers were contesting and awards it to the younger brother Oughtlake, on condition that Oughtlake give his older brother a sedate palfrey rather than a knightly courser as a mount each year.21 Damas has disgraced his chivalric status by imprisoning members of the Round Table and may no longer ride the kind of horse which is appropriate to knights. Morgan’s assumption that her plan has succeeded and Arthur is dead precipitates a crisis within her own immediate family. She attempts to murder her husband, King Uriens, while he is sleeping and is only prevented by the intervention of her son Yvain (see Plate ). And lyghtly she toke the swerde and pullyd hit oute, and wente boldely unto the beddis syde and awayted [considered] how and where she myght sle him beste. And as she hevyd up the swerde to smyte, sir Uwayne lepte unto his modir and caught hir by the honde and seyde, ‘A! fende, what wolt thou do? And thou were

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King Arthur’s Enchantresses nat my modir I sholde smyte of thyne hede! A,’ seyde sir Uwayne, ‘men seyde that Merlyon was begotyn of a fende, but I may sey an erthly fende bare me’.22

The fate which Yvain (here called Uwayne) forbears to deal out to his murderous mother prefigures the death of Morgan’s sister, the Queen of Orkney, by beheading at her own son’s hands (see Chapter ). Morgan begs mercy of her son; picking up the cue he offered her she hastily blames her lapse upon a devil who had tempted her. The incident understandably leads to a separation between husband and wife, though Morgan continues to hold castles in Uriens’s kingdom of Gore. In both the Suite and Malory, Arthur sends the corpse of Accolon to Morgan, now at Camelot, with a threatening message. Infiltrating the abbey where the injured king is resting, Morgan steals the magic scabbard once more. As Arthur rides in pursuit, Morgan hurls the scabbard into a lake, returning it to the otherworldly domain whence it came, and turns herself and her companions into stone – undoubtedly the most dramatic shape-changing feat of her magical career. Arthur assumes that this is an act of God and that his sister has attracted exemplary punishment for her treachery. Expressing perfunctory regret for her ‘misadventure’, he and his companions turn for home. In a coda to the Accolon tale, Morgan sends a splendid cloak to the court as a gift for Arthur.23 It is brought by a young woman who is unaware of the cloak’s true nature. Niviene, Lady of the Lake, is present at court when the cloak is delivered, temporarily replacing Merlin as Arthur’s magical adviser. Niviene warns Arthur against trying on the lavish garment, advising that he should get the bearer to put it on first. In the Suite the girl protests that the cloak is too splendid for a mere servant. In Plate , anxious courtiers look on as the girl displays the gift. Arthur insists, however, and the hapless girl puts on the cloak, only to fall to the ground dead, brente to colys (burnt to cinders) in Malory’s words; Niviene’s suspicions are vindicated. In the Suite the girl is vague about the donor of the gift, saying that it is sent to honour Arthur’s greatness by ‘the maiden of the isle of fairies’ and she does not seem to be aware that it is poisoned; in Malory the cloak is explicitly represented as a peace offering from Morgan.24 Here the girl’s strong reluctance to try on the garment suggests complicity in the plot, and Arthur has the cloak put on her by force. As Myra Olstead has noted, Morgan’s transformation of the cloak alludes directly to her principal classical archetype, Medea, who kills her rival, Jason’s chosen bride, with just such a poisoned gift.25

Morgan and Arthur

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The Accolon episode occasions Morgan’s breach with Arthur and the court; henceforth Morgan will return neither to court nor apparently to her husband, but remains in her own castles. In the rest of the Post-Vulgate Cycle she has a relatively restricted role: as in the Vulgate Mort Artu she is instrumental in revealing the affair between Lancelot and Guenevere, and appears with Arthur’s death-barge to accompany him to Avalon. Malory makes wider use of material from the Tristan en Prose and the Lancelot as a basis for Morgan’s subsequent career in his Morte Darthur and so she has more to do in his text. In the Morte Darthur, as we shall see in Chapter , she becomes a threat to knights errant, taking them prisoner with erotic intent, or attempting to enmesh them in her plots against Lancelot and Guenevere.26 Malory uses the hostility established between Morgan and Arthur to motivate an adventure in his ‘Book of Sir Tristram’. Morgan’s animus against Arthur, Palomides reports, brings her to seek deliberately to destroy ‘all thos knyghtes that kynge Arthure lovyth’ by decreeing a custom that all knights passing must joust with a large number of her knights at once; a custom successfully overcome by Lamerok.27 Malory makes the custom personal, though it is not clear, since Morgan is not in the castle when Lamerok arrives, that she distinguishes between Arthur’s particular favourites and all other knights of the Round Table. The Accolon episode has more work to do in the two texts than simply illustrating one of the extremes of sibling rivalry. Both accounts strongly emphasise the role of Mordred in the downfall of the Round Table; since the Post-Vulgate Cycle, as Bogdanow points out, has no section corresponding to the Lancelot in the Vulgate Cycle, the importance of the queen’s affair with Lancelot in precipitating the final catastrophe is necessarily underplayed. Though he cannot omit the affair, Malory too is more interested in political aspects of the downfall. At the beginning of the two narratives the incestuous begetting of Mordred, and Merlin’s prophecy of his treachery, are also given prominent treatment. The Accolon episode follows shortly afterwards, as a rehearsal for, and, since it is successfully foiled and Arthur emerges triumphant, as a kind of undoing of Mordred’s final betrayal. Morgan’s bid for power is a sham, rooted in magic and murder rather than honourable combat and political challenge. As a woman, she is forced to rely on a male agent who quickly reverts to his primary loyalty to his king when faced with the charge of treason. The final part of Morgan’s plan, once Arthur is dead, is scarcely thought out; ‘she thought she could make Accolon king, either by the devil’s help or by magic or by entreaty of the nobles of Great Britain’, reveals the narrator of the Suite.28

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King Arthur’s Enchantresses

Morgan’s opponent is young and vigorous, not yet fully grown into his kingship since he takes on a trial by combat personally, and he has a redoubtable ally in Niviene, who deploys her powerful feminine magic, acquired from Merlin himself, to counter Morgan’s malevolent plotting.29 Mordred’s enterprise is, in comparison, solid, clever and all too successful. As a man, he can act for himself in the political sphere, employing forged letters which make appeal both to the incontestable rights of blood, and, in Malory, to the desire for a better life through the potent use of propaganda, persuading the barons that ‘with kynge Arthur was never othir lyff but warre and stryff, and with sir Mordrede was grete joy and blysse.’30 When Arthur returns to England, old, exhausted, and bereft of Lancelot and Gawain, Mordred deals his father a fatal wound. Morgan thus doubles Mordred: the fear of betrayal within the family, the bid for political power which demands the elimination of brother or father, is faced and contained in the earlier episode. Morgan’s sisterly rivalry fails because of her gender, and because a plan dependent on magic is effectively foiled by a more powerful enchantress and a vigorous king. The power bid of the son is not so easily countered by an ageing, worn-out monarch, a depleted Round Table and the sheer loss of fortune symbolized by the appearance of the adder before the final battle.31 Morgan’s anticipation of Mordred’s treachery is made particularly clear in the Suite when after the theft of the scabbard she withdraws to her castle of Tugan. Here in the middle of her hall she erects a tomb containing an ivory box. Within this is an inscription recording Arthur’s death, the name of the man fated to kill him, and Gawain’s death and the name of his killer. The inscription was given her by Merlin, but Morgan herself is not allowed to look at it. Characters within the narrative, with the single exception of Merlin, are not permitted to know how the present will relate to the future, but for the narrator of the Suite, and his audience, the significance of the Accolon episode is strikingly cued by this appeal to the power of what is written but may not be read. The whole plot of the Mort Artu is thus unreadably summarized in Morgan’s sinister series of enclosures.32

Power and the Family Arthur has trusted his sister more than anyone else among his kin or his wife, and his trust is cruelly betrayed. Morgan’s hostility towards her brother is shown as motivated by a straightforward jealousy, a desire for ‘worship and

Morgan and Arthur

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prouesse’, in Accolon’s words. As a woman, she can never achieve this in a world where status is predetermined by noble blood (the reference to Morgan as a bastard in the Merlin is pertinent here), augmented by deeds in the chivalric arena.33 Such status as Morgan has derives from her husband, a largely ineffectual figure in the Suite and Malory, from her magical powers which in these texts she uses only for self-aggrandisement, and from her relationship to her brother – the very source of the psychological rivalry. That Morgan hates her brother so profoundly in the Suite, yet, as seen below, seems to be on good terms with him later in the cycle, in the Post-Vulgate Queste, shows how much characterization is subordinated to function within any one plot episode: when a seeress who can discern hidden truth is called for, Morgan is instantly rehabilitated, whatever her crimes may have been earlier in the cycle. Other relationships are distorted by Morgan’s jealousy of her brother in the Suite and Malory. Her marriage to Uriens has not contained her energies – as noted in Chapter  it is once she gains a married woman’s relative independence of action that she perfects her magical knowledge. Killing an unarmed, sleeping knight is one of the most tabooed actions in chivalry: even Gaheris shrinks from murdering his mother’s lover under such circumstances.34 Yet Morgan is shown as so detached from social norms that she has no qualms about attacking her defenceless husband, bringing the marriage to an end. Her relationship with her son is already damaged: apparently Yvain had lost all affection for her before her attempt on his father’s life, the Suite reports; ‘he did not love his mother Morgan at all, because he saw that she did not love or respect King Uriens’. Predictably the son identifies with the patriarchal order.35 Although Yvain spares his mother’s life, they are not represented as meeting again in either text. Indeed, in pursuit of power and erotic satisfaction, Morgan is prepared to sacrifice all her kin relationships; in the Italian Ponzela Gaia she even confines her own daughter in prison as a punishment for sexual activity.36 The story of Arthur and Accolon illuminates some dominant preoccupations of the medieval aristocracy. As marriage begins to be redefined in the twelfth century, the Church emphasises the importance of the bride’s freely given consent and the notion that a wife should be a companion to her husband, not simply the bearer of his children. Once the husband–wife relationship is understood as emotionally powerful, brothers can no longer be certain that their sisters owe a stronger loyalty to their birth family than to their husband and in-laws. Women’s private desire may be working against the interests of

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King Arthur’s Enchantresses

masculine authority within their original family.37 Whenever women follow their own desires, they make society anxious; they do not always have men’s specific interests at heart, nor do they (as we shall see in the next chapter) always accept the overriding importance of the quest for honour – the chief value of chivalric society.38 As Accolon discovers to his cost, the knight cannot tell whether he has fallen in love with a ‘good’ lady who will subordinate her private desires to his public standing, or a ‘false’ woman who has other plans beyond those he is aware of. Notwithstanding these anxieties, the limitations of what women can achieve are amply confirmed by the Accolon story. Morgan can only act through her male cat’s paw, for there is no basis for overt female intervention in the political sphere. By the end of the episode, the female threat is routed and the chivalric world – at some cost to its members – closes ranks once more. The Suite provides a female exemplar in the form of Niviene, who, in this episode, though not necessarily elsewhere in the text, is strongly supportive of chivalry. The opposition between Niviene as the Lady of the Lake and Morgan in the Suite marks a further stage in the polarization of both characters towards extremes of virtue and vice. This oppositionality is elaborated further in the Livre d’Artus and the Prophesies de Merlin, both of which are discussed in Chapter .

Morgan and Guenevere Though Morgan is only depicted as openly attacking her brother in the two texts we have been considering thus far, her enmity towards her sister-in-law Guenevere is well established – and much better motivated – across almost all the prose texts. Even in the Suite, where the emphasis is firmly on the betrayal of brother by sister, the hostility between the sisters-in-law is not far to seek. When Morgan seeks Guenevere’s permission to leave Camelot after the burial of Accolon, the text gives a privileged insight into the queen’s thoughts, quite at variance with what she actually says; ‘The queen, who did not much like her, having never seen any good in her, did not answer what she was thinking, for she would have said, “My Lady, go away and never come back.”’39 Bad blood between the sisters-in-law is evidenced as early as the Guiot manuscript of Chrétien’s Erec. When Enide arrives at her husband’s kingdom, she offers at the church a splendid embroidered chasuble, given her by Guenevere. The chasuble was originally a garment made by Morgan in the Perilous Valley, and intended for her lover, which Guenevere had obtained

Morgan and Arthur

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through subterfuge.40 As Foulon points out, although Morgan is consistently represented as a benign, absent healer in Erec and Yvain, the legend of Morgan’s valley and the froideur between the sisters-in-law must thus have already been current at the end of the twelfth century, known to the Guiot copyist, if not necessarily to Chrétien himself.41 Morgan’s abortive affair with Guenevere’s young relative Guiomar is cited in the Lancelot, the Estoire Merlin, its Middle English translation, the Prose Merlin, and the Livre d’Artus as the root of the hatred between the sistersin-law.42 The start of the affair is described in some detail in the Estoire. Guiomar, Guenevere’s nephew, bears a name which matches that of Morgan’s lover in Erec.43 Although Morgan is said to be the wife of King Neutres earlier in the Estoire, here she behaves very much like an unmarried woman, as she does throughout the Livre d’Artus where this story is also related. Guiomar enters a private chamber where Morgan is busy making a golden headdress for her sister. The couple’s initial flirtation – Guiomar holds Morgan’s thread for her and asks her questions about her handiwork – quickly leads further. The attraction between them is mutual, and, since a large bed is to hand, their passion is swiftly consummated. Morgan’s sociability and attractiveness are emphasized in the portrait quoted in Chapter , which precedes the lovemaking.44 Guiomar is overwhelmed with passion, as the Merlin shows: And when he understood and saw that she would willingly grant him what he was begging for, he took her in his arms and began to kiss her most sweetly until they began to heat up as hot as Nature demands, and they threw themselves onto a large, beautiful bed; they played the game everyone plays, as they yearned to do, and they were joined in very great love.45

The breathless speed of the description suggests a genuine, instant passion so overpowering that neither can nor wants to resist. The Lancelot relates how the affair comes to the ears of Guenevere, who decides that no good can come of such a thing: The queen … had been keeping close watch on them, as she would gladly have kept Morgan chaste, lest the king be shamed, and Guiomar as well lest the king punish him, for he would have hated him for such behaviour had he learned of it.46

Ostensibly Guenevere’s intention is to save Morgan’s reputation and to improve her morals; a responsible medieval queen was charged with making sure that the honour of her unmarried ladies-in-waiting were not compromised by

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the lively young men in the king’s retinue.47 However, her anxiety is chiefly for her young relative’s standing with the king, as the Livre d’Artus shows more plainly. Ashamed at being caught in the act by Guenevere in this text, Guiomar readily renounces his mistress at her urging. Morgan is heartbroken; according to both the Lancelot and Livre d’Artus, it is at this point that she undertakes her training with Merlin.48 After this breach with her sister-in-law, Morgan prosecutes her feud with Guenevere wherever she can. In the Lancelot, as recounted in Chapter , once it is confirmed to her satisfaction that Lancelot and Guenevere are lovers, Morgan seeks to expose the infidelity to both king and court. Her attempts at disclosure fail chiefly because of their indirection: Morgan dispatches her emissary to Camelot with an overcomplicated story. Morgan’s damsel claims that Lancelot has renounced chivalry, turned to God and made a full confession of his sin – including his adultery with Guenevere. But her audience are so exercised by the improbability of Lancelot ever giving up chivalry that the main import of the message almost fails to register. The queen gives an impassioned defence of her relationship with Lancelot, swearing that ‘there was never a guilty love’ (amor vilaine) between them.49 Even the production of a ring given to Lancelot by Guenevere, which Morgan has stolen from her prisoner (see Figure .), fails to convince, and the messenger’s story is disregarded. Morgan resolves to keep Lancelot imprisoned in the hope that the queen will go mad or die, but eventually she is forced to release him when he comes close to death in her care.50 In the Tristan en Prose, and thence in Malory, Morgan makes two further attempts to disgrace her sister-in-law. First she dispatches a magic horn to the court: no unfaithful lady can drink from this without spilling its contents. The plot is soon derailed when a too-frank disclosure of the horn’s properties to Lamerok by its bearer causes that knight to reroute the horn to the court of King Mark of Cornwall, where indeed the infidelity not only of Queen Iseult but of all but four of the other ladies present is manifested (see Figure .). Though Mark’s first reaction is to swear that he will burn everyone involved, his barons, shamed by the extent of their womenfolk’s faithlessness, in Malory if not in the Tristan, persuade the king that the horn is an object of wicked sorcery, and its revelations should be discounted.51 The magic drinking horn and the cloak which will only fit the faithful lady are recurrent in chivalric romance. Satirical rather than dramatic in intention, these motifs generally prove the impossibility of female fidelity, but since all – or nearly all – ladies

Morgan and Arthur

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are equally guilty, their lovers are able to put the discovery down to experience. All the men present are united as victims of women’s deception, and thus escape having to react violently to their public shaming.52 In another unsuccessful bid to embarrass the lovers in both the Tristan and Malory, Morgan makes Tristan carry a shield to the Tournament of the Harde Roche, bearing a device with ‘a kynge and quene therein paynted, and a knyght stondynge aboven them with hys one foote standynge upon the kynges hede and the othir uppon the quenys hede’ (see Figure .).53 When Tristan fails to understand the image, Morgan explains that the king and the queen are Arthur and Guenevere, but refuses to reveal the identity of the knight ‘that holdith them bothe in bondage and in servage’. Tristan duly bears the shield in the tournament; Arthur, never the most perceptive reader of riddling texts or images, finds the meaning of the device impenetrable, but Guenevere immediately guesses what lies behind it. When questioned, Tristan admits the shield’s provenance, but not to understanding its meaning. Arthur becomes more interested in discovering Tristan’s identity than pursuing the significance of the shield, and the shock of the emblem’s revelation is dissipated in a joust between Arthur and Tristan in which Arthur is wounded. Tristan leaves without revealing his name or the identity of the pictured knight.54 In other texts Morgan employs less highly coded means to make Guenevere’s life a misery. In one episode in the Prophesies de Merlin, Guenevere has a disturbing dream, involving a leopard, a crowned female serpent, a second white serpent and a lion. The queen sends a messenger to the Lady of the Lake, who correctly interprets the dream as referring to Lancelot, the queen herself, the daughter of king Pelles and her son, Galahad, though her reading is couched in rather vague terms. As a precaution, Guenevere has also sent damsels out to consult all the other enchantresses of the kingdom, including Sebile, a crony of Morgan’s. Morgan, who is with Sebile when the messenger arrives, gleefully advises her to tell Guenevere that the leopard signifies a knight who will drag her body through the town behind his horse as a punishment when she has been discovered committing adultery. The effect of this news on Guenevere is devastating; she weeps incessantly and loses her beauty. Fortunately the damsel sent to the Lady of the Lake returns and sets matters straight with the correct interpretation. She also bears a magic ring from the Lady, which prevents Morgan having any power over Guenevere (very possibly the ring Lancelot carries to the Val sans Retour, though Chrétien’s Chevalier de la Charrete suggests that Lancelot has the ring from the Lady of

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King Arthur’s Enchantresses

the Lake independently of Guenevere).55 The wise damsel informs Guenevere of Sebile’s friendship with Morgan, a link which Arthur confirms. Concluding that Sebile’s reading may safely be discounted, Guenevere quickly cheers up and recovers her beauty. Morgan’s malicious intervention, though broadly inaccurate, is intended to frighten Guenevere and it works most effectively for a time. The queen knows that Morgan is aware of her affair, and that everything is at risk if she manages to find substantive proof of it.56

The End-Game Morgan, her brother and her nephews meet once more before the final collapse of the Round Table. In the Mort Artu Arthur loses his way in the forest and takes shelter in Morgan’s castle. Morgan welcomes her brother warmly, though he does not at first recognise her, and puts him to sleep in the chamber where Lancelot had painted the walls with his life-story while he was Morgan’s prisoner (see Chapter ). When Morgan reveals her identity Arthur is overjoyed, ‘He looked at her and recognised her, and he jumped joyfully out of bed and told her that he was very happy that God had led him to her.’ Their old closeness is quickly re-established. The king then begins to look at the paintings; he ‘could read well enough to decipher a text’, says the narrator, and soon he discovers the truth about Lancelot’s affair with Guenevere. Figure . shows him holding up both hands in surprise and dismay: Lancelot’s paintings are visible on the wall, clearly capImage not available tioned so that the identity of those involved cannot be mistaken. Arthur is not elsewhere in the Vulgate depicted as skilful in decoding symbolic allusions, but now even he has seen enough. Méla comments: ‘in La Mort Artu, the prose Lancelot has produced its own illu. . Arthur looks at the pictures minated text. … That which could

Morgan and Arthur

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not be written is told through images.’57 Indeed Morgan confirms the authenticity of the narrative by recapitulating a number of puzzling episodes from the Lancelot, explicable to Arthur now he knows the full story.58 For Arthur the paintings confirm the private warning he has already received from his nephew Agravain, which he had discounted in the light of Lancelot’s apparent love for the Maid of Escalot. Nevertheless he puts the matter out of his mind until Agravain finally and publicly makes the accusation again.59 The painted chamber reappears in the Post-Vulgate Queste. Here Mordred chances to enter the room, then summons Gawain and Gaheris to see the pictures. Morgan hopes to induce the brothers to accuse Lancelot as part of the narrative of the adventures they have experienced in the Grail Quest; they are sworn to recount everything that has happened to them when they return to Camelot. Gawain and Gaheris refuse to believe the evidence of the paintings until they have further proof. In the Mort Artu Morgan makes pungent appeal to shame and dishonour: if Arthur does not punish the guilty parties, she says, he ‘will be shamed before God and everyone, for no king would or any other man would tolerate being shamed that way’.60 In the Post-Vulgate Queste Gawain and his brothers are encouraged to take action in the name of the loyalty they owe their king and uncle. Morgan is frequently shown as anti-chivalric in later thirteenth-century Arthurian narratives, but she is always adept in the rhetoric of courtly masculinity, both with her family and in her dealings with other knights. Arthur and his nephews decide to discount this illustrated text as potentially fictional, even if, as Gawain observes, it depicts every adventure of Lancelot’s he has ever heard about. Rather than precipitating the final crisis, as Morgan had hoped, the revelations create the audience’s apprehension that the secret will soon be made known.61 Malory’s narrative does not include the episode of captivity in which Lancelot painted his autobiography, nor this scene. Indeed, he consistently reduces the role of Morgan and the other enchantresses, preferring to emphasise a tangle of multiple causes for the downfall of the Round Table. The factionalization of Round Table politics and misguided human decision-making are responsible for the final catastrophe, ‘the splitting of the kingdom into viciously hostile magnate affinities in a manner analogous to his own age of the Wars of the Roses’, as Helen Cooper notes.62 Despite the ruptures with Arthur and Guenevere and Morgan’s alienation from court, romance texts always show Morgan coming in person to take Arthur away after the final battle. The twelfth-century texts – Geoffrey of

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Monmouth, and the Latin and vernacular texts most directly dependent on him, from Gervase of Tilbury to Wace and Layamon – had restricted Morgan (or Argante, as Layamon calls her) to Avalon, where she prepares healing salves and awaits the arrival of the king. She does not appear publicly at court in the twelfth-century texts (though her lover attends Erec’s wedding), nor at this early stage do her castles offer traps for the unwary knight, since she holds no estates in Arthur’s kingdom. The thirteenth century extends the scope of Morgan’s activities through elaboration of her sisterly role. She is now expected to participate in the life of the court, where her passionate love affairs and desire for power figure the ways in which women’s agendas can disrupt chivalric norms. In line with Morgan’s increased participation in Arthur’s life, the later texts (the Mort Artu, and the texts dependent on it, the Post-Vulgate Mort, Stanzaic Morte and Malory) magnify Morgan’s role at Arthur’s death from that of a distant, successful healer to that of psychopomp – the conductor of the dying man to his final resting place. The return of Excalibur to its watery origins apparently summons Morgan with a retinue of ladies in a black-decked ship to carry her brother to the Other World.63 The dignity and mystery of this departure to the paradisal island where Arthur will be cured of his wounds and from where, as ‘the hope of the Britons’, he will return to save the nation in its darkest hour is undercut in these texts when Arthur’s last knight, Girflet or Bedivere, finds the king’s tomb the day after his departure. The ‘discovery’ in  at Glastonbury of the graves of Arthur and Guenevere, whether this was a subterfuge on the part of Glastonbury’s monks to generate income for the rebuilding of the Abbey or whether the find was politically motivated, in order to quell Welsh opposition to Plantagenet rule, meant that the ‘departure into the west’ narrative had to accommodate popular knowledge about the Glastonbury grave site.64 Thus the later Morgans in the Stanzaic Morte and Malory are a good deal less sanguine about Arthur’s chances of recovery than the Morgen of the Vita Merlini. Here Morgen thinks there is hope for Arthur; ‘at length she said he could be cured if only he stayed with her a long while and accepted her treatment’.65 Malory’s Morgan laments, ‘A, my dere brothir! Why have ye taryed so longe from me? Alas, thys wounde on youre hede hath caught overmuch coulde!’, a diagnosis already present in the fourteenth-century Stanzaic Morte. The ladies weep and shriek dramatically as they conduct Arthur away, in a marked departure from the Mort Artu. In both English texts, Morgan’s repeated invocations of ‘my brothir’ draw attention to the sibling relationship.66

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Afterlife in Avalon The French cyclical romances and the English texts dependent on them consigned Arthur to an earthly tomb, though not without some doubts as to which tradition was ‘auctorysed’. Other continental romances were less eager to renounce the Avalon motif. In French chansons de geste Avalon appears often as a land ruled by Arthur, accompanied by his most outstanding knights – Yvain, Gawain, and, oddly enough in La Bataille Loquifer, Charlemagne’s nephew, Roland. Alternatively Avalon is depicted as an Other World ruled by Morgan, where Arthur is less prominent or has not yet arrived (this type is considered in Chapter ).67 In La Bataille Loquifer (originally composed about , but the episode of interest here is a late-thirteenth-century interpolation), the hero, Rainouart, is taken through Morgan’s agency to Avalon while he is sleeping. Here he is commanded to fight against a monstrous knight, Chapalu, in a straightforward trial of valour, presided over by Arthur. Rainouart prevails and the vanquished Chapalu is restored to human form, losing his monster features – a cat head and horse body – through drinking some of Rainouart’s blood. Rainouart’s reward is to become Morgan’s lover for a brief interval, and she becomes pregnant by him. Rainouart is pleased at his approaching paternity, but he needs to leave Morgan’s realm to continue his search for his missing elder son. Morgan permits this, but her benevolence vanishes when she realises that, under normal social rules for the precedence of elder and legitimate children, Rainouart’s legitimate offspring represent a threat to the interests of the child she is carrying. She sends Chapalu to organise a shipwreck, from which Rainouart is rescued by a kindly mermaid. According to the narrator of the poem, Morgan and Rainouart’s child Corbon will be a ‘living devil’. The child’s spiritual monstrousness parallels the monstrous physical shape of cat-headed Chapalu whom Rainouart had returned to human form.68 In Le Bâtard de Bouillon (c. ), King Bauduins of Jerusalem sets sail out of sheer curiosity for a country beyond the Red Sea, which turns out to be ‘the land of Arthur and Morgan the Beautiful’. Here Bauduins’s knight Hugues Dodekin achieves some rather unstrenuous adventures, blowing an ivory horn in an orchard and plucking a rose reserved only for the most valiant of knights and guarded by two automata, adventures derived from the Joie de la Cort episode in Erec, and to the Roman de la Rose.69 In this Other World, the normal knightly combat of chivalric romances – as evidenced in such

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King Arthur’s Enchantresses

chansons de geste as Jaufré (considered in Chapter ) and La Bataille Loquifer – is replaced by successful engagement with marvellous objects. These are associated with the domain of courtly leisure; the scene is set in an orchard, rather than on the field of combat. Hugues gains recognition for his valour, but it is his suzerain Bauduins who is rewarded with substantial gifts from Arthur for his yet unborn offspring, the eponymous Bâtard: a horse, a mail-coat and prophecies of the child’s future prowess. Both romances feature an episode in which the qualities of the hero or his followers are tested in marvellous feats; in La Bataille Loquifer, where Morgan is clearly allied to demonic powers, the hero is lucky to escape with his life, while Le Bâtard rewards the courage of Bauduins and his men for venturing to the Other World with marvellous gifts and valuable information.70 By the mid-thirteenth century, then, Morgan’s realm has become part of the collective imaginary landscape of Europe, an island which one might chance upon during an ordinary voyage. In La Faula, a Catalan poem composed in Mallorca between  and , the poet Guillem Torroella tells how he was borne on the back of a whale eastwards to the Enchanted Island, a land in close proximity to, if not identical with, the Earthly Paradise. Torroella is welcomed by Morgan, who appears as a beautiful girl of about , and is taken to her splendid palace. The court is adorned with elaborate illustrations of Arthurian heroes and their adventures in its glass windows, drawn from a range of stories which indicate that Torroella was highly familiar with the Vulgate Cycle. Arthur is seated in a sorrowful pose, gazing at his sword, which reflects life in the real world. Two sisters dressed in black, personifications of Love and Courage, sit at his feet. The state of the world has made Arthur so melancholy that he now desires death. Love and Chivalry have parted company, courts of honour no longer concern themselves with love, and nobility is on the decline, he complains. The narrator questions his host thoroughly: is this the same Arthur who is expected to return by the Bretons? Is he not supposed to be dead? How has the king survived? The questions show the poet’s awareness of different and conflicting traditions, in particular the problem of squaring Arthur’s life on the Enchanted Isle with the existence of the king’s tomb. Arthur explains that Morgan bathed him in a fountain whose source was the River Tigris – one of the four rivers of the Earthly Paradise – to heal his wounds, and that he is now sustained in eternal youth by an annual visit from the Holy Grail. His empty tomb was erected to prevent knights from searching for the king

Morgan and Arthur

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and putting themselves into danger. Arthur laments more specifically that his sword shows him that on earth brave men go unrewarded and hampered by poverty while miserly kings prosper at their expense. Morgan has sent for Torroella so that he can make known to the world Arthur’s ‘sorrow and grief’ and so that noble lords can take action to remedy the iniquities which grieve him; she has no erotic designs on the poet. Although she retains her original healing skills, she cannot comfort Arthur; her sole intention is to find a way to dispel her brother’s sorrow through an appeal for social reform. The poet uses the myth of Avalon to make pertinent points about contemporary conditions, gracefully proposing that to reward him for his poetry would remedy Arthur’s melancholia.71 A late treatment of the brother–sister relationship, based in part on La Faula, but developing rather differently, is found in the great Spanish romance Tirant lo Blanc (c. ). The hero Tirant is with the emperor of Constantinople when four maidens appear at the court.72 They are emissaries of Morgan, who has been sailing the seas in search of Arthur. The emperor has in captivity a lord whose name he does not know; the prisoner possesses a sword called Excalibur and is attended by Sir Fe sens Pietat, a villainous and unchivalric knight in other sources.73 Morgan and the emperor hurry to the silver cage where the king is imprisoned, and find him gazing dully at his sword. He does not acknowledge Morgan, but, as if in a prophetic trance, immediately begins to impart wisdom. Arthur’s complaints about the state of the world echo those in La Faula, but he adds further advice about the gifts of Nature, the obligations of a monarch, the origins of honour, the duties of knights, the attainment of wisdom and the virtues of nobility. After much further questioning, Excalibur is removed. The king recovers his senses and joyfully recognises his sister. A great feast ensues with much dancing and celebration. The emperor salutes Morgan as a beautiful and noble queen, ‘the beginning and end of all good’, for her courageous search for her brother. After supper, brother, sister and entourage depart in Morgan’s boat. The strictly medieval interests of La Faula, centring on questions of preferment, the categorization of feudal obligation and the relationship between fin’amors and noble deeds, have here given way to an early modern interest in the art of successful kingship. Morgan recovers her original benevolence, but she retains the more active role she acquired in the thirteenth century, seeking out her brother, and apparently curing his mental distress by removing the symbol of his earthly authority, Excalibur. The episode retains an understanding of the intensity

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of the brother–sister relationship, and the longing of each for the other when they are separated. These Avalonian narratives find Morgan and Arthur removed from the worldly complexities of kingship, power, love and jealousy. The stories translate the sibling relationship from the adult world back to an idealized form of the nursery, to a secure second childhood from which age, disease, sexuality and death are largely excluded. The brother and sister live harmoniously together: Morgan, as in her earliest incarnation in the Vita Merlini, dispenses wisdom; Arthur presides over tests for earthly knights who are retained in, or dispatched from, the Other World kingdom. Passion, hostility and envy are laid to rest: Morgan has largely sublimated her erotic desires into wisdom and nurturing, while Arthur has put aside politics and dynastic anxieties for patronage and philosophizing. The brother–sister relationship of Morgan and Arthur allows the romance authors to dramatize medieval gender and family relations at a remove from the conventional model of fin’amors. The Accolon episode brings into prominence the tensions of the sibling bond, but, looking forward to the end of the cycle, it also underlines the poignant realization that while Morgan’s bid for power is thwarted, ultimately her nephew’s will succeed. The theme of family betrayal for political ambition directs the audience towards the end of Arthurian history, to the fundamental flaw of the Round Table: neither kinship ties nor the fictive bonds of chivalric brotherhood can finally prevail against human passions. In the central Arthurian texts Morgan ends up sacrificing her marriage and her relationship with her son, becoming profoundly, if not finally, alienated from her brother and his queen in a rejection of the deepest, yet the most constricting, ties that can bind a woman. The enchantress’s search for personal agency demands that she extricate herself from the family, from the authority exercised by male relatives, in order to make – or try to make – new kinds of bonds, with lovers, other enchantresses, or with knights who are themselves alienated from the courtly world.74 The next chapter uncovers the challenges that Morgan presents to chivalry once she has freed herself from her family bonds, and the curious allies she finds in presenting that challenge.

><

Morgan and Chivalry

The Val sans Retour

I

   of Arthurian romance, it often seems that men wield all the power and that women can only achieve their aims by prevailing upon men, usually through beauty or charm, to act on their behalf. Though this is a valid view of the gender relations in romance, women do have an important countervailing weapon to use against men: the power of words. Women use words to persuade or cajole, but they can also use verbal dexterity to extract promises from men, promises which, under the rules of honour culture, the men are bound to keep. Known in English folklore as the ‘rash promise’ and in French as the don contraignant, this is a frequent motif; the man who promises that he will do anything for his beloved very soon lives to regret it.1 Words charged with more-than-usual power are, of course, spells, and, as we shall see in this chapter, Morgan’s knowledge of magic allows her to emerge in some narratives as articulating the desires and frustrations of courtly ladies which they cannot express for themselves, coercing men into acting in ways that appear contrary to chivalric norms and that are often detrimental to their quest for honour.2 Morgan’s most spectacular and provocative feat of magic is the Val sans Retour or Val des Faux Amants (the Valley of No Return or Valley of False Lovers), an enchanted valley from which no knight who has ever been unfaithful to his lady in any way, ‘even in desire alone’, can escape, a paradise that rapidly palls on its inhabitants. Here knights are punished for their infidelity; forced to remain in the company of their ladies, they are

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King Arthur’s Enchantresses

deprived of the opportunity of performing knightly deeds in an enchantment that lasts seventeen years. The story is most fully elaborated in the Lancelot (with a significant alternative version in the Livre d’Artus), but the story was most likely already known before the end of the twelfth century.3 Indeed, to understand the thinking behind the Val sans Retour we need to go back to Erec, Chrétien’s earliest romance. At the end of Erec, when the difficulties between husband and wife have been resolved, and Erec has restored his reputation, temporarily lost after his marriage because he chose to spend time with his wife Enide rather than in feats of arms, one final adventure remains. It is mysteriously named la Joie de la Cort (the Joy of the Court). As a result of a ‘rash promise’ given to his lady, the knight Maboagrain is obliged to remain in a magical garden where he must fight against all comers until someone defeats him.4 Maboagrain is a cruel opponent; the garden wall is topped with spikes, each one impaling the head of a defeated challenger, no matter whether the loser had pleaded for mercy. The lady’s intention is to keep her knight with her for ever, but Maboagrain chafes at his loss of freedom. He has no opportunity to establish or enhance his chivalric reputation – indeed Erec has never heard of him – but he cannot dishonour himself by breaking his promise, nor by deliberately losing an encounter. Erec fairly defeats Maboagrain and thus learns his story while Enide discovers that the lady is her cousin, who had eloped with Maboagrain some years earlier. In narrating her own history to her cousin, Enide emphasises the fact that she herself is married to Erec, and suggests, with a tactful indirection, that the couple’s retreat to a private, erotic world is detrimental both to the love relationship and to Maboagrain’s public standing. The whole adventure, then, is the result of Enide’s cousin’s insecurity – that she eloped with her lover rather than marrying him legally is a telling detail. Howard Bloch identifies Maboagrain as an earlier version of Erec: besotted with his lover and experiencing a diminution in his reputation, he turns, as Erec did, to violent action to restore his sense of masculine identity.5 But unlike the many battles Erec undertakes, which augment his honour and repair the breach with his wife, Maboagrain’s contests are futile. His exploits remain uncelebrated in the courtly world since no defeated knight survives to tell the tale. His excessive violence – the refusal to grant mercy, the disgraceful display of opponents’ body parts – in what is essentially a private domain is an unsatisfactory substitute for chivalric practice. Bloch overlooks the sensibility of Enide’s cousin; although by extracting the promise from her

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lover, as Jane Burns puts it, ‘a woman’s words have effectively short-circuited the chivalric economy’, once male freedom of movement is restored, Maboagrain’s lady is excluded from the jubilation of the courtly world (the ‘joy’ of the adventure’s title) and from further negotiation with her lover.6 The text provides her with a partial comfort in the discovery of her kinship with Enide, but the consolation is only temporary. Enide soon departs with her husband. The powerful words ascribed to Enide’s cousin cease to be effective and she speaks no more, except in the powerless sphere of female conversation. Here she must remain while her lover is free to leave; her words no longer have the power to retain him. In the Val sans Retour entrapped and faithless lovers multiply;  of them are captive by the time the enchantment is broken. Such faithlessness comes to represent a norm for the chivalric world. The knights imprisoned here are not held captive by the ‘rash promise’ made, and then more or less willingly kept, for love, but rather by broken promises: their faithlessness to their ladies. Ordinary women’s words have had no influence over these knights; only Morgan’s magically enhanced words of enchantment can keep them by their ladies’ sides in a coerced, unwilling state of fidelity. Only an altogether exceptional knight, outstanding in arms, but absolutely unique in his qualities as a lover, can liberate the captives from a state, not of loving too much – as Maboagrain, Erec and their many reflexes do – but of loving too little.7 The Val sans Retour is motivated by erotic betrayal. There was a man whom Morgan loved very much, but who regarded her as someone ‘for whom he felt more fear than love’. Morgan catches her lover making love with another lady, as shown in Plate . Morgan (right) gestures with her hands to draw the viewer’s attention to the activities of her lover and his new paramour, who is wearing scarlet and whose legs are shamefully exposed. Morgan spectacularly punishes her rival with exactly the kind of torment inflicted on the lustful in contemporary visions of hell. She is chained in such a way that from feet to waist she feels as if she is in a block of ice, while from the waist upwards she is seared by fire.8 Morgan’s errant lover is punished only by finding himself imprisoned in her embrace.9 The spell of the Val sans Retour binds any knight who has been unfaithful in thought or deed; those who have never been in love may leave at will, while ladies may come and go as they please. Enclosed like the orchard in Erec by a kind of air curtain, which can be crossed only in an inward direction, the valley contains a spring which waters its thick green grass. It is a comfortable place; the knights can

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hear mass in a chapel which lies on its borders, for it is secular, not Christian, fidelity that is at stake here. All the trappings of courtly leisure are available: food and drink, backgammon and chess, dancing and music. The knights have the company of their ladies and squires, if these wish to remain with them, and, the text makes clear, the place suited some men very well, ‘many knights … were very much at ease there’.10 In the Livre d’Artus Morgan creates the Val for Guiomar, the lover from whom she had been separated by Guenevere and whom she kidnaps and confines there.11 Here the enchantment is less pointedly a response to male infidelity: unfaithful ladies are also unable to leave. Thoughtfully, Morgan erects a large warning sign at the entrance to the valley, making clear that only the knight who overcomes the Val enchantment will succeed in rescuing Gawain from the Dolorous Tower where the evil Carados is keeping him prisoner. As this is an important adventure, involving a large number of knights in the prestigious challenge of liberating the king’s nephew and overcoming the dark ruler of the tower, the challenge of the Val sans Retour attracts many comers, though the Livre d’Artus account breaks off before the enchantment ends. The Lancelot follows Galescalain, the Duke of Clarence and Morgan’s nephew, into the Valley in close detail. Though the landscape within may be pleasant, the entrance itself is alarming. Passing through a smoke-like barrier, the duke is constrained on either side by walls so that he cannot turn round. Coming to a low, narrow door he abandons his horse, unsheathes his sword and enters. Within he finds two fire-spewing dragons, which attack, injuring him severely. Passing through a second door he finds a broad, rushing river, which he must cross on an unsteady plank, at the end of which three knights are positioned to attack. At their first onslaught the duke is so terrified that he falls into the river. He is hauled out and beaten over the head until he loses consciousness. Stripped of his armour, he is carried into a garden, where he finds himself in the company of other captive knights and learns the secret of the Valley. Galescalain comments pungently: ‘if he had known no prowess would be of avail, he would never in his life have set foot in that place, for he well knew that no one could love for very long without being unfaithful either in deed or in thought.’12 The consequence of his infidelity is the loss of his chivalric attributes: horse, weapons and armour. He is no longer the man he was.13 Imprisonment within this female realm thus comes as a consequence of penetration in search of the kind of adventure that should have confirmed

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Galescalain’s masculinity. It is inviting to read the entrance to the Valley in terms of the female body; once the knight has passed through the hymen-like barrier of the air curtain and is enclosed in the constricting passage there is no going back. After braving the dragons (perhaps the castration fear of the vagina dentata) and his immersion in the river, the cool moisture which medieval physiological theory predicts for the female interior, Galescalain is battered into submission and loses consciousness – the little death of orgasm.14 Although the Valley challenged his masculinity, daring him to penetrate the adventure, now that he is trapped in its feminized space, his masculine honour is bound to decline. The captive knights must now keep company with women, accommodating themselves to what women want, rather than performing the feats of courage and exercising the freedom to roam which defines the knightly existence. Only the knight who has never been unfaithful in love can overcome the Valley’s evil customs. Figure . shows Lancelot (bearing a diagonal stripe on his shield) throttling one of the dragons, steadily crossing the river, defeating the guardians of the bridge and venturing across fiery ground to the palace entrance, where his way is barred by axe-wielding sentries.

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Lancelot in the Valley of False Lovers

The last of the knights who bar his way is pursued through the Valley; he retreats finally into the pavilion of Morgan herself. The runaway knight dives under the bed where Morgan is sleeping; without noticing that a lady is in the bed, Lancelot overturns it and kills the knight. Immediately the enchantment begins to evaporate, and the knights are freed. Morgan’s lover greets Lancelot enthusiastically, but Morgan herself, though marvelling at his fidelity,

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King Arthur’s Enchantresses

regrets his arrival. She rebukes a damsel who expresses her admiration for the paragon: ‘If he is faithful in love, that is a great honour and a great joy to his lover, but he has brought more harm to us than joy or well-being to her.’15 Lancelot’s undaunted courage when faced with the terrifying female body, the more conventional array of enemy knights, and, significantly, when he accidentally upends Morgan’s bed, succeeds in overthrowing this worldturned-upside-down, where women have control over men.16 Thus the realm of erotic satisfaction, created to give pleasure to women and centred on the bed, is toppled and normality is restored. The released knights begin to stream out of the valley, rejoicing in their freedom, while a furious girl whose lover Lancelot had killed actually takes up a spear and stabs him in the back, giving a phallic expression to her sexualized rage. Normal gender behaviour is badly disturbed in this transitional period before male norms are completely reasserted. It is not only the prisoners within the Valley who were constrained by Morgan’s spell. Yvain (pointedly referred to throughout as the son of Uriens rather than of Morgan) and Galescalain fail to find Lancelot after the end of the enchantment and so leave the Valley in the company of Kehedin the Fair, who takes them to his uncle’s house. The news that the enchantment is over brings extravagantly expressed joy to Galescalain’s uncle, Kay of Estral, but his wife reacts with violent distress; ‘she grieved and sobbed until she was weary and worn-out, and her eyes were red and swollen from weeping and her voice hoarse and broken from shouting.’17 Eventually the lady calms herself. Her husband, it appears, had also been subject to a rash promise, having sworn to her not to step outside his castle until the enchantment of the Valley was ended. Unlike Maboagrain’s promise, this lady’s request was motivated by an ideal of reciprocity in love, ‘for she wanted me in her prison, as I had her in mine’.18 Kay’s acknowledgement that love is a prison for both women and men is a surprising one; the conventional trope in the rhetoric of fin’amors usually casts the man as the woman’s prisoner and as at her mercy.19 That love should become captivity is not simply a perverting transformation brought about by Morgan’s magic; every erotic relationship contains the potential for entrapment and idleness, as Erec witnesses. Kay spells out the disadvantage that the prison of love entails for a knight when captivation becomes literal; the honour of the prisoner-knight gradually diminishes as he is prevented from performing the new deeds which maintain his reputation. Though Kay understands his wife’s distress, he does nothing to reassure her. Indeed, making no effort to

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disguise his happiness, he plans to set out immediately with Galescalain and Yvain to rescue Gawain from the Dolorous Tower. The enchantment of the Val sans Retour illustrates with extraordinary clarity the tension that men’s desire for women sets up in the chivalric life. A knight cannot do without a lady, for a female love-object is an essential part of chivalric identity and the knight without one will find himself the butt of negative comment from men and women alike. The lady, however, demands more satisfaction from her lover than simply dedicating his knightly deeds to her; although these are ostensibly undertaken for her sake, their real function is to bolster the standing of the knight in the male honour game.20 The lady represents an impossible double bind. On the one hand she is the mirror in which a knight sees his deeds reflected, the surface which reassures him of his own identity. On the other hand she makes demands that cannot easily be met: emotional intimacy, a private sphere which is not easily integrated with the public masculine world of action. Sexual fear is also at work here; the Valley figures the female body as both desired and dreaded. It is no coincidence that the catalyst for its creation and its first inmate is a knight who fears more than he loves. The destruction of the Valley brings the unnatural rule of women to an end; from now on the ladies must be content with such attention as their lovers wish to pay them. As I have suggested elsewhere, the comfortable environment of the Valley, which suits some of its male inhabitants very well, is stigmatized partly because it offers real attractions.21 Being a knight-errant is hard work: in Erec when Enide accompanies her husband on the journey in which his reputation is restored, she witnesses the physical discomforts and the exhausting imperative to fight all challengers even when injured that the knight has to face. In the twelfth century, as noted in Chapter , a new understanding emerged that marriage could produce happiness and intimacy for the couple, rather than simply resulting in an alliance for breeding heirs. Thus fighting men might have a strong need for family and home. The treatment of the Val sans Retour is partly determined by the realization that the family environment is a less stressful alternative to the anxieties involved in performance at court and in battle. Knights needed to be reminded that while a retreat to the domestic and feminine for recuperation is permissible in the short term, the real action lies elsewhere in the courtly universe. An instructive comparison can be made between the Val sans Retour and another enchantment, the Magic Dance created by a male magician. In both the

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King Arthur’s Enchantresses

Estoire Merlin and the Lancelot King Bors’ clerkly brother Guinebal encounters a group of people dancing in the forest and falls in love with a young girl there.22 The girl wishes that the happiness she feels when she learns of Guinebal’s love could last for ever. In exchange for her promise of love, Guinebal offers to cast a spell to make sure that the dancing would continue until the knight ‘who has never wronged love in any way’ might come there.23 All knights who come across the dancers thereafter have to stay and dance, until Lancelot finally puts an end to the enchantment. The marvel of the magic dance is not as highly developed as the Val sans Retour and is less charged with meaning. The scene is innocent and charming; the dancers’ welfare is adequately taken care of – they are to sleep and eat in shifts – and there seems little trace of any suggestion that the retained knights suffer distress. When Lancelot eventually lifts the enchantment, it is revealed that those who participate in it ‘have long lost their minds and their memories’.24 The enchantment supports the common-sense observation that every pleasure palls eventually; that it is the work of a clerk rather than an enchantress – another outsider in relation to the noble caste, despite his kinship with Bors – suggests that this marvel is removed from the chivalric world, rather than setting up a challenge to knightliness as the Valley does. The dancers’ amnesia protects them from the anguished knowledge of loss of reputation which those trapped in the Val are not spared.

Lancelot and Morgan Lancelot’s achievement in the Valley provides Morgan first with the suspicion, and then more or less the evidence, that it is her enemy Guenevere whom Lancelot loves. Having taken Lancelot prisoner after the end of the enchantment, Morgan releases him so that he can rescue her nephew Gawain from the Dolorous Tower, on condition that he return to captivity once the liberation is achieved. She sends a damsel with Lancelot to extract an admission from him about his relationship with the queen by trying to seduce him herself. The journey provides an occasion for substantial discussion of gender roles in fin’amors and sexual matters: the damsel maintains that a woman has the right to invite a knight to bed with her if he is too shy to speak for himself. Lancelot claims first, implausibly, that knights do not solicit sexual favours from women: ‘she dishonours herself to say to a strange knight what a knight himself would not dare say for shame’. On being challenged he retreats to

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the double standard, ‘no lady has ever come to a knight with such a shameful demand’, pretending that he thinks the girl is trying to test his honour rather than acknowledging that she might really desire him (though in fact he is right on this score).25 The damsel’s next move is to remind Lancelot of the ideal of service to women, redefining service in sexual terms: ‘It is the custom throughout the kingdom of Logres … that a knight does not fail to satisfy the wishes of a lady or maiden, provided he has the power to do so.’26 Lancelot responds that he cannot be blamed for failing to do what is not within his power. Threats to send the damsel back to Morgan are futile because of the shame Lancelot would incur by failing to protect her from the harm that might befall a girl travelling alone. At nightfall the girl gets into bed with Lancelot, questioning his masculinity until, trying playfully to tweak his nose, she accidentally tears his undershirt ‘all the way down to the hem’. Lancelot draws his sword and threatens to kill her, while she asserts that – in Lancelot’s own appalled phrase – ‘loyalty [is] to do whatever a lady wants’.27 This claim cannot, of course, go unchallenged: it is the code of the Val sans Retour, which Lancelot has already overthrown. The damsel’s tactics reveal her nuanced understanding of the power of courtly rhetoric: both contenders make frequent reference to notions of honour, shame and cowardice. Lancelot tries to stigmatize the girl’s sexual demands as shameful, but his own reputation as protector of women and as lover is at stake. When he admits that he does in fact have a ‘true lover’ the test is over; the damsel has obtained the confirmation Morgan wants.28 This coda re-establishes sexual and social norms after the topsy-turveydom of the Valley’s regime. Despite the claims of Morgan’s agent that knights should submit to women’s desires, and her attempts to blur the distinction between their obligation to protect women from other predatory males and licence for women to express their own sexual desire freely, Lancelot’s repeated invocation of shame reasserts the social norm, while his argument that he cannot be required to do something which is not in his power – feel sexual desire for the girl – points up the essential biological difference between male and female desire: a woman cannot force a man into sex if he is unwilling. The girl’s sexual attack on a Lancelot unable to offer resistance becomes comic: when she seizes his nose as a substitute for his penis she accidentally tears his shirt down to the genital area.29 The incident invokes the threat of rape as the converse of the ideal of service to women, a threat lurking, unacknowledged or euphemized, in the earlier exchanges. As Catherine Batt notes of Malory’s chivalric women,

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‘the threat to and defence of [their] integrity potentially come from the same quarter’.30 Though Lancelot has vindicated the sexual norm of romance, his admission of loving and being loved has breached the convention of secrecy that extra-marital affairs demand and, not for the last time, provides Morgan with ammunition for her feud with Guenevere. As related in Chapter , she now sends her emissary to Camelot with the false message that Lancelot has renounced chivalry and repented of his sin with the queen.31

Morgan in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight If the enchantment of the Val sans Retour is Morgan’s greatest assault on Arthurian knighthood in terms of sheer numbers, it is her plot in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight which offers the most complex challenge to chivalric ideals. Towards the end of the poem Morgan is revealed as the ‘generator of the romance’, the deviser of a series of tests which question the reputation and values of Arthurian chivalry.32 A huge green knight enters Arthur’s court on New Year’s Day and challenges the assembled knights to a Crystemas gomen (game). He wishes someone to cut off his head in exchange for the right to behead his beheader the following New Year. The Beheading Game is taken up by Gawain as the court’s representative; he strikes off the Green Knight’s head, but his opponent picks up his severed head and instructs Gawain to meet him at his Green Chapel in a year’s time. In November Gawain sets off to search for the Green Chapel, but wanders in vain until, on Christmas Eve, he comes to a castle, where he is warmly welcomed. He learns from the lord of the castle that the Green Chapel is not far away and spends Christmas there. For three days before New Year, Bertilak, the lord of the castle, goes out hunting while Gawain remains at home, recovering from his journey. Bertilak proposes an Exchange of Winnings arrangement with his guest; he will give Gawain whatever prey he catches, while Gawain will give him whatever he gains inside the castle. Gawain interprets the Exchange of Winnings as a game, as playful behaviour on his host’s part: ‘þat yow lyst for to layke, lef hit me þynkes’ (that it pleases you to play, it seems good to me) he says.33 Bertilak himself uses terms drawn from the language of commerce – forwarde (agreement), chaunge (exchange), bargayn – suggesting, as a number of scholars have pointed out, that he intends the agreement as a serious, contractual matter.34 While Bertilak is out hunting, his beautiful wife comes to Gawain’s bedchamber and makes clear her desire for him. Torn by conflicting considerations

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– loyalty to his host, his impending ordeal at the hands of the Green Knight, his obligation of courtesy towards a lady, and the implications of the Exchange Game – Gawain resists Bertilak’s wife, accepting only kisses from her, which he gives her husband in the evenings when Bertilak returns from hunting. On the last day, the lady finally desists from the sexual challenge – the Temptation Game – but she does prevail upon Gawain to take her green girdle, promising that it will save him from injury. With the Beheading Contest much in his mind, the knight accepts. He fails to hand over the girdle in exchange for Bertilak’s winnings (a worthless fox). When he meets the Green Knight the next day, he withstands two feinted blows, while the third nicks his neck. Laughing, his opponent reveals himself as Bertilak. The two feints were offered because Gawain made an honest return of his winnings on the first two days of the Exchange Game; but on the third day he cheated by keeping back the girdle, and for that reason he is mildly punished. The implication is that if Gawain had let himself be seduced by Bertilak’s wife, he would undoubtedly have been beheaded. When all is explained, Gawain returns to Camelot taking the girdle as a souvenir of his ordeal. The other courtiers adopt the green girdle, not as a badge of shame, which is how Gawain persists in regarding it, but as the emblem of a newly inaugurated chivalric order. Where is Morgan in all of this? At the castle, when Gawain first notices Bertilak’s beautiful wife, she is hand in hand with an elderly and very ugly lady, who nevertheless is revered by all in the castle. Though once he has resisted the younger lady’s morning visits, and risen from his bed, Gawain happily spends the day in the company of the castle’s ladies, the elderly lady is not mentioned again. But after the Green Knight has explained the rules of the Beheading, Temptation and Exchange of Winnings games to Gawain he reveals the aim of the Beheading Game: to test the Round Table’s mettle and to frighten Guenevere to death. Morgan was responsible, he claims: Ho wayned me vpon þis wyse to your wynne halle For to assay þe surquidré, gif hit soth were Þat rennes of þe grete renoun of þe Rounde Table; Ho wayned me þis wonder your wyttez to reue, For to haf greued Gaynour and gart hir to dyge With glopnyng of þat ilke gome þat gostlych speked With his hede in his honde bifore þe hyghe table.35 (She sent me in this form to your pleasant hall To test the pride, if it were true What is current about the great fame of the Round Table;

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King Arthur’s Enchantresses She sent me as this wonder to rob you of your wits To upset Guenevere and make her die Of fear at that same man who spoke so eerily With his head in his hand in front of the high table.)

Morgan’s plan has clearly met with limited success: Guenevere did not seem to have been particularly disconcerted by the temporary disruption of the New Year’s feast. The enchantress’s motivation and the extent of her responsibility for the other games played in the poem have been much discussed.36 In what follows, I shall suggest a closer relationship between Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Lancelot than other critics have allowed, and argue that reading Gawain side by side with the Val sans Retour episode illuminates the intentions and role of Morgan in the poem.37 The initial challenge Morgan offers to the Round Table is the Beheading Game, a simple test of courage, revealing who is brave enough to appear for the follow-up blow. This is how the Game is played in the poem’s analogues; the victorious knight gains kudos in comparison with those who fail to present themselves for the sequel.38 Crucially affecting the outcome of the Beheading Game are the Exchange of Winnings and the Temptation games. All three games are woven by the Gawain poet from thematic strands also found in the Val sans Retour episode and its concomitant events. En route for the test of courage (the rescue of Gawain from the Dolorous Tower; the Return Blow) the knight finds himself rerouted into a feminized space where he himself risks becoming effeminate (the Valley; Bertilak’s castle, Hautdesert). Here he is offered female conversation, courtly pastimes, delicious food and erotic pleasure, but prevented from taking part in the privileged masculine activities of fighting or hunting.39 The knight finds himself in a place where there is a female subtext, ‘a tracery of spaces coded as feminine’ which he does not fully understand and certainly cannot control.40 Here he must come through a test which depends on keeping a promise (Lancelot’s return to captivity after Gawain’s rescue; the Exchange of Winnings) and he must resist sexual temptation without discourtesy towards his temptress. The Livre d’Artus version of the Val’s origin makes explicit through Morgan’s signposting of the route into the valley that no one can hope to achieve the Adventure of the Dolorous Tower, that test of simple male courage, if he has not first attempted the Adventure of the Val sans Retour, which, as Galescalain crossly points out in the Lancelot, is an altogether different kind of ordeal, a measure of sexual fidelity and promise-keeping, exactly what’s at stake in Gawain’s dealings with Bertilak and his lady.41

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Arthur’s superlative knights, Lancelot and Gawain, successfully pass through the female spaces and the challenges they present to ‘chastity, courtesy and the keeping of faith’.42 Initially Lancelot proceeds by violent masculine action, upending Morgan’s bed at the heart of the valley. Gawain is more circumspect, quietly resisting the lady with all the verbal dexterity he can muster while trapped in the bed at the heart of the castle. Gawain keeps always in mind the value of cortaysye, one of the values symbolized, along with clannes (purity), in the pentangle design on his shield. In the poem’s version of the chivalric code cortaysye is defined as something rather different from the luf-talkyng (love-talk) expected of Gawain, the fyn fader of nurture (the complete master of well-bred behaviour), by the people in Bertilak’s castle.43 In his sparring with Morgan’s damsel, Lancelot employs courtesy to try to keep women’s desires at bay, maintaining that no lady could make a shameful sexual demand on an unwilling man.44 Gawain must repeatedly reassert his definition of chivalry in the face of the Lady’s insistent claim that knightly deeds are primarily those undertaken in an erotic context: And of alle cheualry to chose, þe chef þyng alosed Is þe lel layk of luf, þe lettrure of armes; For to telle of þis teuelyng of þis trwe knyhtez, Hit is þe tytelet token and tyxt of her werkkez.45 (And choosing from all chivalry, the chief thing praised Is the faithful game of love, the learning of arms; For talking about the efforts of these true knights, It is the inscribed title and the text of their deeds.)

The Lady’s use of literary metaphor reminds the audience of Gawain’s reputation as lover in the larger world of Arthurian romance, suggesting that there are alternative texts of knightly deeds, rewritten to women’s taste. As the ladies of the Val sans Retour maintain, in this kind of reading it is the deeds performed in the game of love – not simply those deeds performed in the name of love – which are worthiest. These are the stories which women, enthusiastic listeners to, and readers of, romance, actually want to be told.46 Lancelot and Gawain both believe that they have come through one trial – the adventure of the Val, the Exchange of Winnings – unscathed, when a further complication ensues. When Lancelot’s damsel tries to seduce him, he resists her easily since he has no desire for her. Lancelot’s courtesy is threatened: drawing a sword against a lady and spitting out her kisses are more forceful reactions than Gawain permits himself. No more than Gawain can

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Lancelot rid himself of his temptress until she declares that the trial is at an end, when she has gained the information that Lancelot owes allegiance to a mistress whom he loves to the point of being incapable of desire for any other woman. Morgan’s damsel then leaves Lancelot alone, even apologizing for her provocative behaviour. Rigby misses the point when she argues that Morgan ‘is interested only in robbing Guenevere of her lover’s fidelity’.47 Exposure, not betrayal, is Morgan’s aim at this stage of the Lancelot. Temptation is almost always about something other than sex in romance: it comes charged with a set of hidden meanings. Gawain too learns that a woman can, delicately but firmly, express sexual desire, and that it is not easy to resist her without discourtesy. Yet Gawain is little more racked by desire than is Lancelot. His mind is fixed firmly on the ordeal he faces on New Year’s Day and his loyalty to Bertilak; his allegiance to Mary, the courtly mistress whose portrait is painted on the inside of his shield, guards him from desire, just as the thought of Guenevere protects Lancelot from sexual arousal.48 The Lady, like her counterpart in the Lancelot, tries to discover if Gawain’s coldness is caused by his attachment to someone else: ‘if ye haf a lemman … and folden fayth to þat fre’ (if you have a lover … and keep faith with that noble lady) he should tell her, she suggests.49 When, in contrast to Lancelot, Gawain swears he does not love another, the Lady is answered. Yet she does not admit defeat until she has persuaded Gawain to accept the girdle, an intimate feminine accoutrement symbolizing all that Gawain has so successfully resisted. She tells him the girdle will protect his bodily integrity, the body which he – and his patron Mary – have defended with such determination, but in fact it directly causes his physical violation, the infliction of a bleeding wound on Gawain’s tender neck. In the contest between Morgan’s agents and the knights’ patrons, Guenevere and Mary, the agents are foiled by the superior quality of male self-control, granted to the knights because they are devoted to a higher, if still female, power.50 Lancelot withstands the damsel’s seduction attempts by retreating into shocked courtesy, and he goes on to rescue Gawain from the grim host of the Dolorous Tower. Gawain withstands the lady’s assaults, and he thus survives the return blow, winning the Beheading Game on points. The most extreme tests of masculinity, both texts suggest, can only be achieved by engaging with and resisting the feminine, not by ignoring it. Lancelot does not circumvent the Val, Gawain does not fear to enter the castle; both face down the dangerous female forces which insinuate other values into the knightly world.

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Unwittingly Lancelot gives Morgan what she wants, the admission that he is a lover, the circumstantial evidence which she uses to prosecute her feud with Guenevere, just as Gawain, with only a partial understanding of his own situation, takes the girdle, conceding that there is something more important to him than the honour game with Bertilak: the preservation of his life. In the Lancelot Morgan’s success is partial and temporary. When he returns from the Dolorous Tower, she drugs Lancelot, stealing his ring to use against Guenevere, as we saw in Chapter , but her emissary’s story falls on deaf ears and she is finally obliged to let her prisoner go free.51 Lancelot holds to the chivalric code in its highest manifestation: he will not break his promise to Morgan, he will not be unfaithful to Guenevere or betray her identity. In Gawain, Morgan’s complex series of games within games is more successful in its challenge to the values which chivalry espouses, but ultimately the Lady’s desire is safely recontained within the clerically approved pentangle values of cortaysye and clannes (purity). Although Gawain’s trials make the audience aware of the tension between these two points of the code, in the end the pentangle, despite its rigidity, has not been fractured. The substitute that the Lady offers as protective talisman, the flexible green girdle, has been found wanting; causing injury rather than averting it, it brings shame not glory. Yet the love of life which – among other values – the girdle represents is not discarded at the poem’s conclusion. Rather, the girdle is adopted as a self-aware sign of honour, adorning the bodies of all lordes and ladis þat longed to þe Table, men and women alike.52 In its new signification the girdle transcends the gender division at issue in the poem, but it only embraces those courtly women who are unquestioningly aligned with the chivalric project. The fulfilment – or lack of fulfilment – of Morgan’s aims in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight has proved problematic for critics. The testing of the Round Table has clearly been achieved; the institution’s renown for courage has been investigated and the Table’s representative has come through with qualified success. The plot to kill Guenevere, as many critics have noted, singularly misfires.53 Scholars writing in the s and s tended to assimilate the arrival of the Green Knight to various types of chastity test, such as the horn or mantle tests (see Chapter ). They assume that Morgan’s aim is to expose Guenevere’s infidelity with Lancelot, in much the same way that Morgan’s messenger to Camelot in the Lancelot intends to shame the queen.54 But the suggestion of a chastity test founders on the difficulty that, as the poem makes clear, these are early days for the Round Table; it is ‘a prelapsarian court’.55

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Lancelot is already a presence; he is mentioned at l.  just after the Duke of Clarence (significantly Lancelot’s prominent fellow-quester for Gawain and the last person to fail the test of the Val sans Retour). Lancelot is already in love with the queen, even if she does not yet know it, but there is no reason why Morgan should be aware of the relationship. Writing in the s and s, the second wave of critics investigating Morgan’s role in Gawain tended to interpret her appearance in the larger context of Arthurian history and thus largely avoid questions of motivation.56 Morgan, they suggest, anticipates the collapse of the Arthurian world as a result of the queen’s adultery and seeks ways in which that collapse can be staved off or undone. Most scholars, except the most literal-minded, accept the Lady as a manifestation of Morgan. They cannot be one and the same for they appear together; rather, as Heng notes, they are ‘non-identical doubles … thoroughly constituted as the other’s reference’.57 Morgan and her agent are clearly responsible for the Beheading Game and the Temptation Game; the intricate link between the Exchange of Winnings and the other games make it likely that Bertilak again acts on Morgan’s instructions when he suggests the game to Gawain on the night before the first day of hunting. Morgan’s primary aim in the poem is, as in the Val episode, to question chivalric values. The damsel tempts Lancelot, and the Lady tempts Gawain, pressing hard on that tender spot where cortaysye and clannes overlap, suggesting that women’s desires may not be as closely aligned with male interests as the ethic of courtesy pretends. The Val sans Retour offers a luxurious feminine space away from the rigours of the quest for honour; the castle offers a sociable shelter from the hardship of Gawain’s search. In both texts Morgan offers Lancelot and Gawain an alternative to the frightening enterprises against powerful, magical forces in which both are engaged. When Lancelot indicates that Guenevere is his sustaining power, Morgan is swift to act against her. The poet – though not Gawain himself, who denies having a lady of any sort – reveals that Mary is Gawain’s sustaining power, a female force against whom Morgan cannot, and indeed may not wish to, contend. The motif of Morgan’s enmity towards Guenevere, so prominent in the aftermath of the Val episode, is transferred to Sir Gawain. In both narratives Morgan’s plans against Guenevere fail because the queen keeps her head, despite her evident shock and anguish.58 She talks her way out of the crisis of revelation in the Lancelot, and she fails to react to the grisly spectacle in Gawain. Guenevere’s secure alignment with chivalric values in both texts

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protects her from harm; Elspeth Kennedy notes ‘her positive attitude towards chivalric achievement, which means that love for her will not result in peresce or destructive activity’.59 In the earlier narrative she vigorously disputes the claim that Lancelot could abandon chivalry and denies the imputation of a guilty love; in the English poem she silently places her confidence in the Round Table’s ability to react honourably to the Green Knight.60 Morgan’s motives in Gawain are exactly what Bertilak claims them to be. First, she is driven by her well-established hostility towards Guenevere (thus there is no necessity to assume chastity tests or other kinds of exposure to her plan), and second, she genuinely enquires into Camelot’s understanding of chivalry. Which values could challenge and redefine the honour code? The erotic – as always – fails, despite the Lady’s appeal to the language of fin’amors in her jousting with Gawain, but the code is threatened by the instinct symbolized by the girdle: the love of life itself, ‘the private desire that includes all others within it. To yield to this desire might only be the beginning’, Fisher notes.61 Erec, Lancelot and Gawain explore a set of opposing, gendered values. In each text, the hero or his proxy (Maboagrain, Galescalain) is routed into a private, feminine, and indeed feminising, space, where normal chivalric action is set aside by women’s desire. This desire is expressed through women’s verbal power: the rash promise, Morgan’s words of enchantment, the redefinition by the Lady of chivalry as the lel layk of luf (the loyal game of love). In each text the hero-knight comes through the test: recovered male nobility in the form of Erec rescues Maboagrain from his confinement; Lancelot’s perfect fidelity both to Guenevere and to courtesy gets him through the Val to Carados’s tower where a woman helps him to victory; Gawain escapes with a nicked neck and wins the acclaim of Bertilak and of Camelot. Chrétien limits the consideration of any alternative to chivalry: indeed it is Enide who reveals to her husband Erec that his men are losing faith in his knightly potency; Maboagrain’s honour must, all agree, be allowed to take precedence over his lady’s feelings. The Lancelot author elaborates women’s challenge to the chivalric code; he finds space for female desire by making it the source of Lancelot’s chivalric and erotic perfection. The Gawain poet knows how to weave together the different challenges that feminine space offers to chivalry; his is a complex game of textual reference and recognition. The late revelation of Morgan’s identity, as Moore shows, is a literary treat for those members of the audience who take pleasure in knowing about the

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wider Arthurian universe. Jauss, we recall, observes that the medieval text likes to ‘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’.62 Such pleasures, of recognition and suspense, are among the chief delights of reading Arthurian literature. Ambivalence remains, however, even as Sir Gawain’s plot snaps satisfyingly shut. Whether Morgan’s designs are good or evil in this poem depends on how she is read; audience responses are produced by their previous knowledge of her. For Lucy Paton, Morgan’s is a ‘malign scheme’; Friedman calls her ‘a goddess of discord’; yet, as Moore argues, ‘these conflicting views of Morgan’s nature will surprise no one familiar with the way she haunts the periphery of Arthurian romance’.63 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight deliberately gives us too little information to decide about Morgan, just as we are left to decide whether Gawain or Bertilak is correct in their differing assessments of the seriousness of Gawain’s failure.

Loving Lancelot Morgan first meets Lancelot when he dispels the enchantment of the Val sans Retour. Her feelings on this occasion are decidedly mixed. Initially she greets him with the discourteous, ‘In God’s name unwelcome … as the greatest wrongdoer of all knighthood’, reversing the terms with which her lover has hailed Lancelot as ‘the flower of all knighthood’. Lancelot’s fidelity nevertheless earns her respect; he embodies what every woman wants, even if Morgan had not believed that such an paragon could exist.64 By the end of Lancelot’s first captivity both she and he know that she is aware of his feelings for the queen, since she has brought Lancelot to the verge of suicide by inducing in him hallucinatory dreams of the queen’s infidelity. Making Lancelot swear that he will not see the queen before Christmas, Morgan releases him. Thus she succeeds in temporarily depriving Guenevere of her lover; ironically, a side effect of Lancelot’s oath to avoid the court is the death of his friend Galehaut, the man who loves him even more than Guenevere does.65 Lancelot is captured by Morgan and some fellow enchantresses a second time when the queen of Sorestan, riding in company with Morgan and Sedile (probably identical with Sebile in the Prophesies de Merlin, though the Lancelot’s figure is the earlier), finds him asleep under an apple tree.66 Figure . shows the ladies manhandling the sleeping Lancelot on to a bier. The sight of the

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attractive man, whom none of the ladies at first identifies, causes them to quarrel briefly among themselves over who is most deserving, in terms of beauty and rank, of the knight’s love. The queen decides to leave the choice to the knight himself; Morgan advocates taking him prisoner to ensure his cooperation. When the ladies present themselves to Lancelot, in a parodic version of the Judgement of Paris, the Queen of Sorestan takes the lead. But Lancelot refuses them all brusquely, saying ungallantly to himself that ‘he would rather be dead than take one of these old women instead of his lady, the queen’.67 Lancelot is released from prison by the damsel caring for him, on condition he fight on her behalf to prevent her from being forced to marry the Queen of Sorestan’s brother. It is not clear in the Lancelot whether Lancelot manages to fulfil his promise, since he is distracted by the begetting of Galahad and afterwards is entrapped in the Magic Dance. Nor does the Lancelot recount the enchantresses’ reaction when they discover that their prey has escaped. Malory gives Morgan a more prominent role in his version of this story; it is explicitly her castle to which Lancelot is taken and, despite the queens speaking in unison when they deliver their ultimatum to Lancelot, the speech shades into Morgan’s first-person revelation, ‘For hit behovyth the now to chose one of us four, for I am quene Morgan le Fay, quene of the land of Gore.’68 Lancelot is more abrupt in his refusal of the queens, who directly invoke his love for Guenevere and demand that she be renounced in favour of one of them. Basing his refusal on character rather than aesthetic grounds, he retorts, ‘I woll none of you, for ye be false enchaunters’, and swiftly denies Image not available the truth of the rumour about Guenevere. The damsel who effects his release is the daughter of King Bademagu; Malory is scrupulous in having Lancelot discharge his promise to the maiden to fight on her father’s side at . . The sleeping Lancelot the tournament against the King of is captured by queens North Wales. The episode of the three (or four) queens is the kernel of the later depiction of Morgan and her fellow enchantresses in the Prophesies and the Tristan

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en Prose as abductors of knights for erotic purposes.69 At this point in the Lancelot the Queen of Sorestan is the main sexual aggressor; Morgan’s passion for Lancelot has not yet developed to the extent we see in the third captivity of the Lancelot, nor is it yet the conflicted love–hate of the Tristan. In Malory the episode supports that text’s broad characterization of Morgan as a sexual threat to knights, but, more importantly, the abduction is the first event in the ‘Noble Tale of Sir Launcelot du Lake’. Here the enchantresses’ assertion that Lancelot must renounce Guenevere and choose one of them as peramour is the first point at which Malory’s text allows the suggestion that the love between Lancelot and Guenevere is not chaste, a suggestion which Lancelot, as throughout the Morte Darthur, vigorously rejects. Towards the end of the Lancelot Morgan succeeds in taking him prisoner once again.70 Her motive is now apparently sexual desire for the knight himself rather than revenge on Guenevere, whose name is not even mentioned. This desire is perhaps kindled by the erotic gaze of the Queen of Sorestan in the episode discussed above; her gaze sexualizes Lancelot for Morgan.71 Lancelot’s third captivity, in which he is kept drugged on a bed in a large, fortified room, strangely foreshadows the final sleep of Arthur in Avalon; ‘She had a bed set up as if it were for King Arthur himself. “Lancelot will sleep here for as long as he lives”, said Morgan.’72 It is under these enervating circumstances that Lancelot, inspired by a craftsman in Morgan’s palace who is painting a mural depicting Aeneas’s flight from Troy, decides to paint the story of his own life, borrowing materials from the mural painter.73 The Aeneid would have been familiar to the Lancelot’s audience: some would know the Latin, others the vernacular version, the Roman d’Aeneas. What connection is there between Lancelot and Aeneas? Sir Gawain and the Green Knight furnishes a fourteenth-century answer: Aeneas is, like Lancelot, and, by the end of the poem, like Gawain, a double figure:74 Þe tulk þat þe trammes of tresoun þer wroht Watz tried for his tricherie, þe trewest on erthe: Hit watz Ennias þe athel…75 (The man that made the cunning devices of treason there, Was tried for his treachery, the most patent/truest [man] on earth: It was Aeneas the noble…)

Aeneas is both the truest of heroes, staunchly following his empire-founding mission, and yet a traitor to his native city; some medieval traditions regard

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Aeneas as jointly responsible with Antenor for the admission of the Trojan horse within the walls of Troy.76 Lancelot is the truest embodiment of chivalry, yet, in the name of love, he betrays his friend and king. Lancelot puts love above loyalty to Arthur; conversely Aeneas sacrifices erotic pleasure and betrays Dido for the imperial good. Lancelot is inspired by love, and, like the knights of the Val sans Retour and the victims of rash promises, he fears the loss of knightly identity through his drugged inactivity. Thus he paints the tale of his own treachery in the most patent manner possible. Arrested in his knightly adventures, at a point where his story can for the moment go no further, in a curiously self-reflexive moment, Lancelot summarizes the story of the Lancelot so far, beginning not with his childhood, but with the day he takes on his true chivalric and erotic identity: the day he comes to court and sees the queen. In an extraordinarily sophisticated move, the Lancelot tells us how its own hero reads it, but, by showing Morgan interpreting the paintings to her maiden, praising the artist’s skill, the text also menacingly anticipates the ways that other characters – particularly of course Arthur, with Morgan’s help – will understand Lancelot’s achievement.77 Lancelot paints his life to save his life in the short term; he tries to maintain his identity, made up of his ‘deeds and words and all the doings between himself and the queen’; but his narrative about himself will contribute to the end of the larger narrative in which he moves.78 The revelation of the paintings in the Mort Artu causes Arthur to authorize Agravain to keep watch on the lovers and they are swiftly caught in a compromising situation. Set against the Aeneas story, Lancelot’s mural looks forward both to the loss of Arthurian empire for the sake of love and to a broader context of political betrayal. Morgan herself only comes to gaze at Lancelot’s beauty at midnight when he is sleeping. The text keeps the pair oddly separate, summarizing, but not depicting, Morgan’s attempts at seduction; ‘She had often pleaded with him, but he refused to listen.’79 The effect is strangely necrophiliac, aligning Morgan’s desire for the sleeping knight with the perverted desire of the enchantress Hallewes for Lancelot in Malory, and the malevolent intentions of the Orgueilleuse Pucele with her purpose-built guillotine in Perlesvaus.80 Both these women (indeed Hallewes probably derives from the Perlesvaus–Pucele), wish to kill the man they love so that he can neither escape them nor resist their sexual possession of him. Just so Morgan enjoys contemplating, without fear of rape or aggression, the passive male body whose violence is neutralized and contained; his body becomes an object of spectacle.81 Morgan elsewhere

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anticipates the pleasure she and others would get from looking at Lancelot’s corpse; as we shall see, Gaheris, Gawain’s brother, directs a similarly sexualized gaze at the body of his mother’s lover, Lamerok, just before he decides not to kill him.82 This time Lancelot is not liberated by a damsel who needs his help, but rather the sight of a red rose blooming outside his window reminds him so much of his lady that he breaks the bars of the window and escapes.83 The broken bars and the blood that spurts from Lancelot’s hand mirror the breaking of the bars and blood that preface his night with Guenevere in the adventure of the Knight of the Cart; in both cases Lancelot’s desire endows him with an extraordinary – indeed, as Morgan says, a diabolical – strength.84 Morgan genuinely laments the loss of her beloved prisoner; yet it is only after his escape that Lancelot learns the identity of his captor. The Lancelot’s strange reticence in bringing the two principal characters together in this episode suggests that Morgan’s passion is a post hoc invention of its author, intended to manoeuvre Lancelot into painting his life story in preparation for Morgan’s revelation to Arthur in the Mort Artu. Nevertheless, Morgan’s passion for Lancelot, once invented, is an abiding one; in the Tristan en Prose it will metamorphose into a murderous hatred.85 Morgan’s abductions of Lancelot may, as Laurence Harf-Lancner argues, be connected with an ancient archetype of the fairy who takes mortals away to the Other World. There are certainly Other-Worldly elements to the castles where Lancelot is retained: Castle Chariot was part of the landscape of Chrétien’s Knight of the Cart; in the Lancelot the castle of the paintings has affinities with Avalon, and in the Mort Artu, as Charles Méla has noted, with the Grail Castle.86 Yet Lancelot’s captivities serve larger ends than thwarting the sexual desire of Morgan and her sister-enchantresses. The first captivity expands on the hatred between Morgan and Guenevere, a theme to which Malory alludes in his version of the Castle Chariot abduction. The second captivity, with its comedic echo of the Judgement of Paris in the enchantresses’ parade in front of their unhappy prisoner, models a proper reaction to the blandishments of enchantresses – a more self-consciously comic version of the episode is discussed in the next chapter. The third captivity has difficulty making the erotic motive persuasive when Morgan and Lancelot barely converse and Lancelot remains unaware of his captor’s identity. Harf-Lancner suggests that the captivity motif and the rivalry with Guenevere symbolize the ‘hatred of the wild world for the courtly world’, but, as Chapter  has argued, Morgan’s

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antipathy towards Guenevere is more complicated than this. Although she is alienated from Camelot and from the chivalric values it promotes, she is not necessarily aligned with the wilderness in these thirteenth-century texts.87 Morgan’s engagement with chivalry in the form of the pre-eminent knights, Lancelot and Gawain, is not, as it will become in the Prophesies and the Tristan, a simple, antagonistic response. Morgan operates in part, as Harf-Lancner notes, as a spokeswoman for her sex, advocating an alternative to men’s unrelenting pursuit of honour: an intimate space which privileges the private and emotional in human interaction. These civilizing concepts of courtesy and intimacy of feeling are not restricted to the feminine domain, though women see them as highly desirable; they are fundamental to the clerics who compose the romances, who, as Ad Putter shows, consistently urge the integration of these values into the current understanding of desirable masculine, chivalric behaviour. Morgan thus speaks not only for women, but for intellectuals, for those who consider knowledge and civilized behaviour to be worth as much as physical prowess.88 In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Morgan raises larger questions about the demands that chivalry makes on knights: whether life itself may not be more important than keeping promises made in the spirit of a game, or whether the trawþe (integrity) Gawain risks is a supreme value which will come under threat in the future of the Arthurian polity. In both texts, her jealousy of Guenevere and the sudden passion for Lancelot which that jealousy generates, divert Morgan’s political and feminist aims back towards the realm of the personal. In later thirteenth-century texts, as the next chapter will show, Morgan’s actions lose their connection with larger thematic principles; now casual opportunism and antagonism towards Lancelot are manifested as malevolence and spitefulness towards knightliness in all its forms.

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Morgan, Other Knights and Enchantresses

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  thirteenth-century accounts give Morgan a coherent history as Arthur’s sister. Her training in magic, her acquisition of a husband and son from whom she becomes estranged, her happiness with Guiomar, until Guenevere interferes, her hatred of her sister-in-law, her developing passion for Lancelot, and ultimately her retreat from the court to her castles in the forest, are detailed across the Vulgate and Post-Vulgate Cycles and their reflexes in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Malory. In these earlier texts, Morgan represents separately defined female interests within chivalry; champion of a private, life-sustaining domain which is often in opposition to the public performance of knightly deeds and the daily demand to inflict and sustain violence. In the later thirteenth-century texts, the Tristan en Prose, the Prophesies de Merlin and their descendants, discussed in this chapter, Morgan’s reponses to the institution of chivalry become fragmented; she is shown as motivated by insatiable sexual desire and an unpoliticized love of mischiefmaking, rather than an interest in how chivalric values work differently for men and women. In later chansons de geste, considered at the end of this chapter, Morgan recovers the original autonomy she possessed in the Vita Merlini, and is depicted once more as an independent sovereign lady. Restored to her original benevolence, influenced by the role of fairy godmother, and assimilating some of the traits of the Lady of the Lake (Morgan’s sister in Italian tradition), she becomes a generous facilitator of knightly endeavour and faithful love.

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Morgan in the Tristan en Prose Morgan appears in a number of episodes in the vast Tristan en Prose (the first version of which was composed around ). Consequently she plays an intermittent role in the Italian version of this text, the Tavola Ritonda, and in Malory’s sprawling ‘Book of Sir Tristram’, also based on it. Morgan’s activities in the Tristan are given coherence by her frustrated passion for Lancelot which emerged in the Lancelot. Early in the Tristan when Tristan has just begun his adventures as a knight errant in Arthur’s realm of Logres, in the company of the sardonic Sir Dinadan, Morgan sets up an elaborate ambush in order to capture and kill Lancelot.1 A damsel tells Tristan and Dinadan that Morgan is angry because Lancelot has killed an unnamed favourite of hers in a recent tournament, though only a little later in the text her animus against Lancelot is explicitly ascribed to her failure to win his love. Frustrated desire has begun to trouble Morgan’s understanding of chivalric behaviour; her use of ambush at her first major appearance in the Tristan aligns her with the unknightliness of King Mark and Brehus sans pité, her disreputable chief associates in the Tristan tradition. Tristan’s informant maintains that the killing of Lancelot would play a part in a secondary scheme of Morgan’s; she intends to invite a neighbouring knight who particularly hates Lancelot to a feast the following day, in order to display Lancelot’s corpse to him.2 This curiously macabre token of esteem is naturally never produced since the ambush plan goes awry, and we hear no more about Morgan’s new favourite. Nevertheless, the suggestion of female display of a male corpse for the pleasure of another man is highly unsettling. While the dead female body is often put on display in Arthurian texts, signifying either knightly failure (the lady whom Gawain accidentally beheads; Sir Pedivere’s killing of his wife) or romantic fidelity (Elaine of Ascolat), the display of a male corpse disturbingly recalls the Orgueilleuse Pucele in Perlesvaus, or Malory’s perverse Hallewes the enchantress, both of whom have necrophiliac designs on Lancelot, intending to kill and embalm him so that they can possess him for ever.3 That Morgan plans to present a corpse as a love token to another man suggests that her new lover must be comparatively ineffectual and unchivalric, exactly the type who would adhere to the anti-chivalric ethos of Mark and Brehus. Morgan’s ambush does not succeed. Although Tristan is caught in it, with a little help from Dinadan he manages to kill or rout all thirty of his opponents. In an extravagant display of grief and anger, Morgan swears vengeance on the

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man who has put her knights to so much shame.4 Shortly afterwards, Tristan nearly falls victim to Morgan’s revenge. Discovering that the perpetrator of her knights’ disgrace in the ambush bears a particular shield, she sends out ten damsels to find him and entice him to a castle, where he will be killed.5 The damsel who eventually tracks Tristan down has been primed to entrap him through cunning words taught her by Morgan. First she asks for the head of a knight whom Tristan has just overcome, a request he indignantly rejects, declaring he has not come to Logres to become involved in feuds.6 Having refused her first boon, he is obliged to concede the next: to follow her wherever she will lead him. En route, Tristan encounters Gawain, who has spent the previous night at Morgan’s castle. Gawain recognizes Tristan’s companion as one of Morgan’s damsels; bullying the girl into admitting the details of Morgan’s plan, he destroys the element of surprise in the plot. When they arrive at the castle, the damsel warns the garrison that she has brought Tristan, but he is on his guard, and accompanied by Gawain. Under these circumstances, the knights refuse to offer battle. Gawain and Tristan depart unscathed. The second principal episode involving Morgan in the Tristan en Prose is much more complex than the ambush of thirty knights and its aftermath. Tristan and his squire chance to spend the night at Morgan’s castle while en route for the Tournament of the Roche Dure.7 Morgan first suspects that Tristan belongs to Lancelot’s lineage, for which she would punish him cruelly, but, having established that he is not a knight of the Round Table, she treats him with courtesy. Indeed she is so struck by his handsomeness that ‘because of it she neglected to eat and drink’ during dinner.8 This rouses great jealousy in her current lover, Huneson, who determines to attack the new favourite. Tristan sleeps in the chamber painted by Lancelot, awakening first to inspect and wonder about the paintings, and then, in a scene based on the Lancelot archetype, discovering he is a prisoner. Morgan is anxious to find out his true identity, but Tristan will only reveal his name if she promises to release him immediately. Morgan makes the promise and keeps it, even when she discovers that he is the man who destroyed so many of her knights in the ambush. Though Morgan is annoyed at having to release the man who has done her so much harm, she thinks on her feet when she learns where Tristan is bound. She persuades him to take an insultingly enigmatic shield depicting a knight standing on the heads of a king and queen to the tournament and he leaves in some relief.9

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Whether Morgan is really sexually attracted to Tristan in this text is unclear. Certainly Huneson interprets her fascination with the knight as a flirtatiousness which sparks his jealousy. However, the text makes clear – and Malory’s version further emphasises – that Morgan is still obsessed with Lancelot; she remains enmeshed in a complex blend of love and hate which no fleeting attraction to Tristan can disturb. The Tristan narrative delineates her feelings with some psychological insight: She hated him with a great hatred, and yet she had loved him once, and still loved him, but this was against her own will, because she had found him so beautiful, and yet she hated him mortally because he had refused her.10

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Place is important here: Morgan still lives in the castle where Lancelot had been her prisoner for a year and a half, where the story of . . Morgan his love for another woman remains inscribed gives Tristan the shield on the chamber walls awaiting its final revelatory moment in the Mort Artu. Tristan inspects these paintings thoroughly, correctly identifying both subject and artist, though his reactions to them are not made clear. Nevertheless, when Morgan gives him another artwork, the painted shield, he is rightly suspicious as to the meaning of the motif; ‘he suspected and was afraid that this painting was made for some bad purpose’.11 Morgan assures him that she has no idea of the significance of the image, simply that it is modelled on arms borne by her father, Uther Pendragon. Morgan is Arthur’s full sister in the Tristan; she invokes their adulterous father, begetter of Arthur in scandal and deception, to justify the device intended to reveal the queen’s adultery. The Tristan’s narrative voice is anxious that there should be no misunderstanding as to the meaning of the shield, and spells out clearly Morgan’s intention to dishonour Lancelot and Guenevere. Once again, painting both reveals and enigmatically conceals what cannot be said out loud in the Arthurian world. Tristan’s silent viewing of the paintings reminds us that they persist like a quietly ticking timebomb in the Arthurian universe, anticipating a future revelation beyond the scope of the Tristan.12

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At the tournament Guenevere instantly recognizes the significance of the shield’s device; Arthur is slower to comprehend it, even when Morgan stages the appearance of a damsel who loudly draws the king’s attention to the shield, proclaiming that it portrays shame and dishonour for him.13 Arthur never discovers the meaning of the shield; he criticizes Tristan for carrying a shield whose device he does not understand, and Tristan willingly abandons the troublesome object. Morgan’s plan quickly rebounds with unforeseen and unhappy Image not available consequences, for her gift directly results in the death of her lover. After Tristan’s departure, Huneson is determined to follow and challenge him, despite all Morgan can say. His jealousy is compounded by the gift of the shield; that the favoured knight comes from Cornwall, . . Morgan’s demoiselle where chivalric attainment is not prized asks Tristan for the spear and where the king has a reputation for cowardice and treachery, further antagonizes him. Though Morgan implies, without naming her guest, that he was indeed Tristan, Huneson, like most knights of Logres in the Tristan, firmly believes Tristan to be in Cornwall, anchored by his love for Yseult, and concludes that his rival must be lying about his identity. Morgan tries every verbal manoeuvre possible to prevent her lover’s death: prophesying a disastrous outcome, forbidding him by his love for her, but in vain. Huneson’s pride and manliness are piqued by the comparisons Morgan makes between him and the unknown knight. Huneson is fatally wounded in his encounter and Tristan leaves him for dead. Huneson begs his squire to prop him up on his horse and take him back to Morgan; if this is possible, he will die the best of deaths, ‘no knight will die as happily as I do’.14 Huneson tries to recuperate the pointlessness of the death which he has brought upon himself. By dying nobly in Morgan’s presence, he will affirm the strength of his love before his lady. Huneson’s wish is thwarted; as frequently elsewhere in the Tristan, male competitiveness and sexual jealousy are critiqued.

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A lifeless corpse is delivered to the grieving Morgan. She buries Huneson in a tomb on which she fiercely inscribes a message to Tristan. At once threat and prophecy, it asserts that Tristan will die by the very lance with which he killed Huneson. Morgan dispatches a damsel to obtain Tristan’s lance; as Morgan’s damsels usually do, she manipulates the code requiring that knights render service to ladies when asked, so that Tristan surrenders the weapon to her. When he asks her why she wants it, she Image not available reveals that Morgan intends to bring about Tristan’s death with the weapon. Tristan cannot believe that this is true; ‘he said quite truly that this was made-up and a lie’.15 Laughing, he responds that only God knows when he will die, and hands over the weapon. Tristan does indeed die a painful and lingering death at the hands of Mark, inflicted with this very lance. Morgan soaks . . Mark fatally wounds Tristan the blade in poison, and Mark thrusts it through Tristan as he sits harping before Yseult in her chamber.16 Emmanuelle Baumgartner suggests that Morgan ultimately triumphs over both Arthur’s and Mark’s kingdoms: the enchantress shows Arthur Lancelot’s paintings, provoking his ambush of the lovers; she sends Mark the poisoned spear so that he eliminates his most outstanding knight.17 Finally, though, it is the men who determine how they react to the symbolic objects Morgan provides. Mark need never use the spear; he chooses to kill Tristan in a sudden access of jealousy, which he regrets later, and which Huneson’s death thematically anticipates. Arthur need not act on the narrative of the wall paintings; after all Gawain and his brothers wisely reserve judgement on them, despite Morgan’s urgings, after their viewing in the Post-Vulgate Queste.18 Morgan’s tokens – the magic horn, the enigmatic shield, the wall paintings, and the poisoned lance – symbolize the privileging of sexual love over personal and kin loyalty by both Lancelot and Tristan.19 The pointless death of Huneson, brought about by a confusion between erotic love and masculine

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pride, amplifies the real culpability of the chivalric code in the downfall of both Camelot and Tintagel. Morgan becomes victim as well as opponent of chivalry in the Tristan and its derivatives; in the Tavola Ritonda and Malory’s Morte Darthur she is, in her original incarnation, chivalry’s principal survivor when she comes to take Arthur away, but in this version her victory is at best pyrrhic. In the early parts of the Tristan Morgan embodies the anti-chivalric, deploying ambushes, the antithesis of knightly combat, and mobilizing her reluctant damsels in plots directed against Lancelot and Tristan.20 After the loss of Huneson, she fades from the narrative, leaving only the fateful lance in the hands of her sometime ally Mark, an object of unresolved tension for the audience, who know, from the traditions of prophetic inscription in the Vulgate and Post-Vulgate Cycles, that Morgan’s inscription on Huneson’s tomb is bound to prove true.

Morgan in the Tavola Ritonda The Tavola Ritonda, the main Italian translation of the Tristan en Prose, dating from the second quarter of the fourteenth century, offers a rather different picture of Fata Morgana, as Morgan is known in this text.21 Here, as elsewhere in Italian, Morgan is the sister of both Arthur and the Dama del Lago, the Lady of the Lake. In the Tavola Morgan is diligent in trying to alert her brother to the affair between Lancelot and Guenevere, sending a number of magical objects to court. In the Lancelot the split shield which closes up after the love between Lancelot and Guenevere is consummated was a private gift from the Lady of the Lake, prophesying and underwriting their love.22 In the Tavola Ritonda, Morgan sends this shield to her brother to warn him of the affair; somewhat clumsily she also intends to demonstrate to the lovers that they are destined to be surpassed by Tristan and Yseult.23 The split shield is assimilated to the ‘strange shield’ that Tristan bears to the Tournament of Rocca Dura, and to the enchanted horn, as a revelatory token of the affair. The Tavola Ritonda consistently emphasizes Morgan’s prophetic knowledge: the shield manifests her divination of the future of Arthur’s court, and that of Tristan and Yseult. These two will become the greatest of lovers, the text asserts, ‘not through their own fault, but by means of an error’, the couple’s accidental drinking of the love potion.24 As Daniela Branca comments, ‘the maliciousness of Morgan is thus transformed into a solemn announcement that a new champion of love, prowess and courtesy has emerged who will put Lancelot’s glory in the

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shade’.25 Morgan’s interventions throughout the text are primarily signs of ‘an atmosphere of irrevocable destiny’ rather than of spite against Guenevere (though that motif is not entirely absent).26 Morgan’s dispatch of the enchanted horn to Arthur’s court is ascribed to her desire to see the truth made known; Amorotto (Lamerok) redirects the horn to Tintagel with the aim of making trouble for Tristan, because Tristan has refused a second passage of arms against Lamerok after once knocking him from his horse.27 Tristan’s stay in Morgan’s castle takes place in a friendly and courteous atmosphere in the Tavola Ritonda.28 Though Morgan briefly takes Tristan prisoner until he reveals his name, she releases him at once when she learns his identity, and then offers him courtly entertainment. In flirtatious but essentially unserious conversation, Morgan claims that she would love Tristan if she did not know that his passion for Yseult would make her attachment hopeless. When Tristan responds with laughter, she playfully offers him her daughter, the Ponzela Gaia, as wife, when she notices him looking ‘very amorously’ at the -year old girl.29 More seriously, Morgan prophesies that Tristan and Yseult will have one life and one death, if the gift of foresight that she has from Merlin does not lie.30 Since the Tavola does not recount Morgan’s ambush and Tristan’s victory over the  knights, she has no particular animus against him until he kills her lover, Onesun. Her prophecy about Tristan’s death is by no means threatening, and when she presents him with a fine horse and the ‘strange shield’ he accepts both willingly. Guileless Tristan thinks the design odd, but is not suspicious about it; he has not seen Lancelot’s wall paintings and so is not alerted to the threat that images can pose. Indeed once he has used the shield at the tournament, and disclaimed any understanding of the motif to Arthur, he politely returns it to his hostess, even though he has killed her lover in the meantime.31 Tristan’s possession of the shield motivates Onesun’s attack on him in this text; he is not shown as jealously present at the castle where Morgan entertains Tristan, and his death and burial are much curtailed. Ironically the enchantress’s foreknowledge fails in respect of her own future; in pursuit of her plot she does not foresee that her lover will meet his death because of the very shield she has tricked Tristan into carrying. Her prophecy that Tristan will die through the spear with which he killed Onesun will not fail, however: Questo non fallirà, as her inscription on Onesun’s tomb warns.32 Morgan’s animus against Guenevere is outlined during the narration of the Tournament at Rocca Dura; as in the Tristan en Prose, she hates the queen because Lancelot loves her, and Morgan wishes to be Lancelot’s mistress herself,

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but the text also claims that Guenevere was always causing trouble between Arthur and Morgan. The treachery towards Arthur with which Morgan is charged in the Tristan en Prose is largely effaced in the Tavola Ritonda and her passion for Lancelot is mentioned briefly only at this point. Morgan has much more dignity and wisdom in the Tavola than in its source. Resigned to what cannot be (an erotic relationship with Tristan), she treats Tristan with courtesy, and her efforts to reveal the affair between Lancelot and Guenevere are subordinated to her prophetic foreknowledge, given particular value because it was directly acquired from Merlin, rather than motivated purely by spite against Guenevere.33 Closer assimilation to her sister, the Lady of the Lake, may in part be the reason why Morgan is presented more positively in this text; the Lady herself has a darker side in the Tavola than we normally see. Though the Lady intends to celebrate the values of fin’amors by entertaining Tristan, Yseult, Lancelot and Guenevere in her palace, the means by which she forces the lovers into her power are as ruthless as the activities of the Tavola’s many other enchantress figures, beside whom Morgan appears comparatively blameless.34 First the Lady imprisons Tristan; then she captures Lancelot, Guenevere and Yseult by creating illusory corpses of the two knights, a stratagem which nearly brings about Yseult’s death from grief. The lovers remain together in joy and happiness in the Lady’s palace for  days, before – as ever when Tristan and Yseult manage a retreat from the courtly world – they are eventually impelled to return to chivalric society.35 The Lady’s enchantments are blamed for the abduction and Arthur swears to burn this sister – as he has already sworn, for no apparent reason, to burn his sister Morgan.36 Morgan’s final intervention in Tristan’s life comes ominously close to the end of the text; a casual assault by Brehus sans pité on yet another damsel is reshaped to signal the imminent death of the hero. Tristan meets a weeping damsel who is bearing the fatal lance to Mark. The king is enjoined to use it for hunting, for with it he ‘will be able to kill the beast that frightens all other beasts’, a coded reference to Tristan himself.37 The damsel also warns Tristan directly that this is the blade that will avenge the death of Onesun. The narrative voice notes a combination of prophetic knowledge and practical planning on Morgan’s part; she knows the weapon is fated to kill Tristan, but she has poisoned it anyway, so that – like the lance of Morholt, much earlier in Tristan’s career – whoever is wounded by it can never be healed.38 Tristan pays little attention to what the damsel says, though he wonders at

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the intimacy between Morgan and Mark. At this point he is challenged by Brehus for the damsel; ironically he saves her from the predatory knight and sends her on her way, carrying his death weapon to his killer.39 Morgan does not reappear until she comes on the barge to take Arthur away after the last battle. The Tavola frames this appearance in terms of local belief, distancing the original ending of the Arthurian legend from the Tavola’s more sceptical treatment of chivalric history: As it happened, people believed that Fata Morgana came by magic in that ship and took the king to an island in the sea. There he died of wounds, and there the fairy buried him, so they say.40

In recasting its source material, the Italian version reconfigures the character of Morgan. Although the Tavola’s Morgan has somewhat mixed motives, and she retains her habit of wanting outstanding knights as her lovers, she is largely a figure of foreknowledge. Her main role is to mediate the workings of fate; in taking revenge for Onesun she even acts directly to ensure that her prophecy is fulfilled. The linguistic implications of Morgan’s Italian title of Fata (fairy) aligns her more closely with the classical Fates than in English or French; she is often referred to in the text simply as la fata. Her recasting as a wise and prophetic figure in this version of the Tristan story doubtless owes much to this etymological connection.

Malory’s Morgan Malory retains a number of the Tristan en Prose’s episodes in which Morgan is involved. These include the dispatch of the enchanted horn, an episode which gains Morgan the enmity of the knights of Cornwall, who label her the ‘fals sorseres and wycche moste that is now lyvyng’.41 There is also a reduced version of the ambush of  knights which Tristram successfully routs, and Morgan’s consequent attempt to lure him to her castle, a plan thwarted by Gawain.42 Here Gawain recognizes his aunt’s damsel, and is particularly shocked by Morgan’s treachery, which he notes as unbecoming in a queen, the king’s sister, and the daughter of a king and queen.43 Morgan herself is present in the castle when Gawain and Tristram approach, and she replies together with the knights of the castle, refusing to respond to Gawain’s challenge. Malory also curtails Tristram’s stay at Morgan’s castle; he is not imprisoned in the painted chamber since Malory does not use this Lancelot tradition.

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Morgan threatens rather unconvincingly to imprison him until she learns his name, keeps her promise to release him, and succeeds in making her lover, here called Hemyson, jealous by gazing at Tristram during dinner. She gives Tristram more information about the shield than in other versions, identifying the king and queen to him as Arthur and Guenevere, and the knight with his feet on their heads as one ‘that holdith them bothe in bondage and in servage’. Though she declines to tell Tristram the knight’s name at this point, Malory comments that Tristram will discover later that the shield is aimed against Lancelot. Morgan’s passion for Lancelot and her intention to make known the affair to Arthur are given as her motivations for sending the shield, rather than dislike for Guenevere.44 As Malory does not recount Morgan’s affair with Guiomar, or Guenevere’s interference, preferring the Post-Vulgate Suite to the Vulgate’s Continuation of the Estoire de Merlin, the theme of Morgan’s hatred for her sister-in-law is virtually absent in the Morte Darthur. Malory gives a lively immediacy to events preceding the death of Hemyson. In his argument with Morgan, before setting out in pursuit of Tristan, Hemyson maintains that no good knights can come from Cornwall, except Tristram and the visitor cannot be he. When Morgan suggests that this knight might indeed be Tristram he replies curtly, ‘Nay, nay, … he ys with La beall Isode, and thys ys but a daffysshe knyght’.45 When Hemyson is mortally wounded, he exclaims splendidly, ‘the deepe drawghtes of dethe drawith to my herte’ and, in contrast to the Tristan en Prose, he survives long enough to fall dead in front of Morgan’s castle. She makes ‘grete sorow oute of reson’ for Hemyson, and records the name of his slayer on his tomb.46 In the interests of impelling Tristram speedily to the Tournament of the Roche Dure, Malory omits the damsel’s request for the lance. The ‘Book of Sir Tristram’ concludes with the two lovers happily installed in Joyous Garde, and when Tristram’s death is recorded en passant much later during the rollcall of knights at the healing of Sir Urré no connection is made between the trenchaunte glayve with which Mark kills Tristram and the death of Hemyson.47 In his commentary to the ‘Book of Sir Tristram’ Vinaver notes how much the Tristan’s propensity ‘to make the heroes happy and the villains miserable’ appealed to Malory, who systematically recasts his Tristram as an unproblematic exemplar of knight errantry, and his opponents as straightforwardly cowardly and malicious.48 Although the English author reduces Morgan’s activities in the ‘Book of Sir Tristram’, he invents an entirely new piece of wickedness for her. Morgan and her crony, the Queen of North Wales, place an unfortunate lady

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in perpetually scalding water simply ‘bycause she was called the fayryst lady of that contrey; and there she had been fyve yere’. This lady is successfully rescued by Lancelot, who then has to fight a dragon lurking within a tomb on which a prophecy foretelling his engendering of Galahad is engraved. After he overcomes the dragon, Lancelot is invited to the Grail Castle of king Pelles and the events leading to Galahad’s conception unfold.49 Malory both curtails and embellishes his source here: in the Lancelot the lady reveals to Gawain, who had made a previous attempt to deliver her, that she is being divinely punished: ‘He has not yet avenged Himself of a great sin I committed, which is why I suffer this agony and torment.’50 In addition to making Morgan and her fellow queen responsible for what must be one of the divinely ordained Adventures of Logres, prefiguring the Grail Quest itself rather than a whim of jealous enchantresses, Malory reduces the narrative of Gawain’s failure to a passing remark made by witnesses to Lancelot’s feat. The influence of the Tristan en Prose’s employment of Morgan as responsible for casual, malicious instances of the marvellous is clear in Malory’s invention.

La Ponzela Gaia Morgan’s cruelty towards beautiful young women oscillates between the containment of sexual rivals and the punishment of immoral behaviour; the basis for the depiction of Morgan as moral judge may be her subjection of her rival to alternating ice and fire in the Lancelot, a torment echoing the fate of the lustful in medieval hell visions.51 In the mid-fifteenth-century Italian cantare La Ponzela Gaia Galvano (Gawain) encounters a terrifying serpent when he is out hunting one day and is overcome by it.52 The serpent asks Gawain who he is; after briefly pretending to be Lancelot, he admits his true identity. Reverting to her normal form, ‘more beautiful than a rose in an orchard, a delicate maiden’, the serpent reveals itself to be the Ponzela, daughter of Morgan and Onesun.53 She tells Gawain that she has long desired him and they make love. Gawain recalls that he has wagered his head on finding a more marvellous trophy of the hunt than a certain Troiano. The Ponzela promises to aid him, giving him a ring as a pledge of their love; it will summon her, provided that Gawain never speaks of her to others. The magic ring, accompanying taboo and subsequent events are best known from Marie de France’s Lanval, where the hero gains a fairy mistress and great wealth, as long he keeps the relationship secret.

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With the Ponzela’s help, Gawain produces a splendid horse, a body of knights and an extraordinary hybrid monster as trophies, and wins the wager. Following the Lanval archetype, Guenevere tries to seduce Gawain. When he rebuffs her, she organizes a tournament in which every knight must boast of, and then display, his greatest treasure. Forgetting the taboo, Gawain boasts of his lady’s beauty, but his ring has lost its power to summon her and he cannot make good his claim. Sentenced to execution, Gawain is rescued at the last minute by the Ponzela and a fairy retinue. She laments that her mother will now punish her: ‘my mother will put me in such a strong prison that I would rather die.’54 Morgan is indeed unsympathetic; ‘Where have you come from, whore?’, she demands when her daughter returns to her.55 The Ponzela is confined in a dark dungeon, submerged in water to the breasts. Gawain sets out to find his beloved. Acting on advice in a letter from her, he dresses himself and his companions in women’s clothing, disguising himself as the Lady of the Lake – as in the Tavola Ritonda – the Ponzela’s aunt and Morgan’s sister. Thus he gains admission to the castle, rescues the Ponzela and offers to execute her mother. The Ponzela prefers to see Morgan placed in the same dungeon from which she has just been released, a reversal which Gawain effects before he and the Ponzela ride triumphantly back to Camelot. Although the poem does not explicitly say so, it seems likely that Morgan was responsible for her daughter’s transformation into a serpent, intending to preserve her virginity until she met the man who was destined and worthy to be her lover. Analogous motivation is found in English ballads, for example Kempe Owyne, in which a stepmother-witch enchants a young girl into monstrous form, from which she can only be released by a kiss.56 When this relationship apparently breaks down, the Ponzela incurs further punishment from a mother who appears to have become a guardian of morality; her daughter has wasted herself on an unreliable lover.57 The poem ends, as Gardner notes, with the fairy mistress installed in Camelot, rather than with the knight departing with her to the Other World, as we find in Lanval and its analogues. Gawain is too important an Arthurian figure to withdraw from the chivalric world in the manner of the lovers of fairy mistresses in Breton lais.58

The Prophesies de Merlin In the Prophesies de Merlin, probably composed in the s, Morgan’s characterization is determined by her function as a foil to the Lady of the Lake,

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an important figure in this text (see Chapter ). The Prophesies author is inclined to treat Morgan and her fellow enchantresses frequently, though not exclusively, as comic figures. Highly episodic in structure, even by the standards of thirteenth-century prose romance, the Prophesies’ adventures involving Morgan are often fragmented, while some remain inconclusive. This Morgan pursues small-minded vendettas against the Lady of the Lake and the knights of the Round Table and tries to seduce attractive knights. In neither sphere is she successful; she is even worsted in the Dame d’Avalon’s magic contest, as we saw in Chapter .59 The most highly developed sequences in which Morgan appears are: her attempt to make Alexander the Orphan her lover; her quarrel with Sebile over another eligible knight, Bielengier the handsome; the magic contest; and the interpretation of Guenevere’s dream (see Chapter ). Morgan’s most successful move against chivalric order is her disruption of a tournament because of a grudge against Sir Segurant. She sends a dragon, Lucifer in disguise, to the tourney field; other demons play the part of knights who are apparently attacked and devoured by the beast. Segurant bravely attacks the dragon, but is then obliged to pursue it (in imitation of the Questing Beast of the Post-Vulgate Suite and Malory) until he is disenchanted by the power of the Grail, an event which does not occur in the text.60 Comically subverting courtly norms, Morgan’s passion for Alexander is also narrated in some later versions of the Tristan en Prose and thus appears in Malory. By the late thirteenth century it was no longer possible in French tradition for Morgan to be imagined as desirable even by the most innocently inexperienced of knights.61 Morgan’s interest in Alexander is piqued by reports of his handsomeness and courage, given first by a damsel, then by a letter from Alexander’s uncle and enemy, King Mark, requesting that he should be apprehended.62 Early in his career, Alexander is injured in combat against Sir Malagrin; pretending to heal him, Morgan applies a salve, which makes his condition much worse. Here, as Myra Olstead notes of the equivalent scene in Malory, we find the ultimate perversion of her initial presentation in Geoffrey; her misuse of her medical skill to harm rather than heal aligns her with Meleagant in the Chevalier de la Charrete, arguably the least chivalric figure of the twelfth century.63 The conventional courtly trope of the lady as ‘leech’ or physician to the lover’s lovesickness is inverted; Morgan makes her beloved worse, and the malaise she induces in him is literal, rather than, at least partly, metaphorical. Alexander’s illness is not the love-sickness or amor hereos that a true lover spontaneously develops at first sight of the beloved, but a parodic

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variant. Morgan no longer inspires the passion which Guiomar experienced in the Merlin.64 In order to be cured, Alexander submits to a version of the ‘rash promise’. Unlike his earlier counterparts, discussed in Chapter , he is driven by inexperience rather than by amorousness; he promises unthinkingly to do whatever Morgan demands of him. First, on Morgan’s instructions, he rejects the damsel on whose behalf he had fought Malagrin, and then he agrees to defend Morgan’s castle of Belle Garde while she is elsewhere.65 Here Alexander begins to pine away, made miserable by his failure either to avenge his father, murdered by Mark, or to acquire a chivalric reputation: ‘he felt that he was shamed’. Learning from Morgan’s friendly cousin of his benefactress’s lascivious intentions towards him, Alexander is horrified, swearing emphatically ‘that before I sleep with such an old and ugly lady as Morgan is, I would cut off my two testicles with my own two hands’.66 Alexander makes love with his pretty confidante instead. Distracted by the magic contest with the Dame d’Avalon, Morgan fails to return to Belle Garde, and the castle is eventually burnt down by the confidante’s uncle. Alexander remains at the castle’s ruins, fighting against all comers, for the news of the castle’s destruction and his guardianship of the ruins spreads far, attracting challengers whose defeat enhances the young knight’s reputation. Alexander calculates that guarding the ruins for two years is tantamount to keeping his word; he can scarcely be expected to remain in a castle which no longer exists. Thereafter he departs with his new beloved, Aylies la Belle Pelerine, who is herself is as enchanted by Alexander’s physical beauty as Morgan was.67 Aylies offers a more appropriate love relationship and so the young couple leave for the chivalric world. Morgan is more irritated by the loss of her castle than of her intended prey; the narrative does not cast her as heartbroken, but shows her rather in a comic light. Alexander’s violently uncourtly reaction to the news of Morgan’s desire for him amuses his informant: ‘then the young lady began to laugh very hard’, a reaction surely shared by the romance’s courtly audience.68 The comedy is not all at Morgan’s expense; in the agony caused by her poisoning, the callow Alexander mistakenly makes a promise that is entirely open-ended. Reflecting on his situation, he realizes how his renown has been damaged by Morgan’s manipulation of courtesy and rationalizes his position by deciding to defend the castle ruins for an arbitrary period of time. Chivalric principle here becomes almost absurd. Galvanized by Morgan’s sexual threat, to the point that castration becomes – rhetorically at least – a preferable option,

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Alexander ingeniously rewrites the terms of his promise, not only recovering but actually enhancing his reputation. Challenge or desire always shapes Morgan’s actions with regard to men in the Arthurian romances, but among women her behaviour is rather different. Though earlier she appears as a spokeswoman for courtly women, as Harf-Lancner notes, her relationships with other women are by no means models of sisterly solidarity.69 In the Prophesies Morgan allies herself with the enchantress Sebile and the Queen of North Wales, an affiliation derived from the episode of the three enchantresses in the Lancelot. The petty squabbling that breaks out between the friends over possession of the sleeping Lancelot (see Chapter ) develops into a sustained comic episode in the Prophesies in which the enchantresses’ friendship is severely tested. Pickford rightly notes of Morgan, ‘her relations with her fellow-fays are characterized by outbursts of bitter jealousy and furious bad temper which takes the form of quarrels of a most undignified kind’.70 A handsome widower, Bielengier, appears at Sebile’s castle, looking for his abducted child. Sebile knows that one of Morgan’s damsels has taken the infant and promises to recover the child for Bielengier if he will marry her. They spend the night together. Much as Morgan loves Sebile, she also likes the look of Bielengier, and instructs her damsel, Flour de Lis, to return the child only on condition that his father marry Morgan instead of Sebile. Both enchantresses are double-crossed by Flour de Lis. Taking Bielengier aside, she tells him that he is doomed to become husband either of Sebile or of Morgan, unless he helps her flee from her mistress, bringing the child to safety. Naturally the condition for Flour de Lis’s cooperation is Bielengier’s hand in marriage. He willingly grants this since the girl is both beautiful and virgin, and the three make their escape in a boat.71 When Sebile discovers that her new fiancé, Flour de Lis and the child have all vanished, she is sure that Morgan has deceived her. She violently attacks her, seizing her by the hair and dragging her up and down the floor of her hall. Morgan’s servants fear to intervene, assuming that the noise is caused by the demons which their mistress often raises in the course of working her enchantments.72 Leaving Morgan half-dead, Sebile storms off. Brehus sans pité, who has come to visit Morgan, tends her wounds; reviving, she swears revenge on Sebile. Brehus declines to become involved in Morgan’s plan, sagely observing that these squabbles soon end in reconciliation: ‘I know very well the custom of women, that if today it’s war, tomorrow it will be peace.’73

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Meanwhile Sebile begins to feel remorse at the way that she has treated her former friend. Pretending to be on the verge of death from her injuries, Morgan writes to the Queen of North Wales, asking her to come to help hatch a plan of revenge against Sebile, and promising to make the queen her heir. Sebile, in a state of tearful repentance, is already at the queen’s stronghold when Morgan’s letter arrives, and she begs the queen to help reconcile her with Morgan. The queen goes to see Morgan, and makes peace, reminding her friend that Morgan and Sebile had once duped her over a matter involving Ector de Maris, Lancelot’s half-brother. Image not available The two enchantresses had sneaked serially into bed with Ector while sending the queen off on a wild-goose chase, yet she had forgiven them and saved them from Ector’s wrath. Sebile and Morgan kiss and make up.74 To add to the general jollity, Brehus offers to obtain them each a knight by . . Brehus, enticing them to the enchantresses’ Morgan and Sebile castles. Ector is favoured for the queen (since she had previously been thwarted in her intentions towards him); Lancelot, as usual, is Morgan’s choice. Although Sebile complains sorrowfully that all knights flee her, Brehus suggests Lamerok as worthy prey, a thought which cheers Sebile considerably.75 However, the promised knights are never delivered. Morgan sometimes takes thought for women who are of a lesser social station. In the story of Alexander the Orphan, although she prevents Alexander from marrying the first lady whom he defends from an unwanted suitor, she makes the effort to enquire which alternative knight the disappointed damsel would wish Alexander to bestow her upon, and Morgan makes sure that the

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A lifeless corpse is delivered to the grieving Morgan. She buries Huneson in a tomb on which she fiercely inscribes a message to Tristan. At once threat and prophecy, it asserts that Tristan will die by the very lance with which he killed Huneson. Morgan dispatches a damsel to obtain Tristan’s lance; as Morgan’s damsels usually do, she manipulates the code requiring that knights render service to ladies when asked, so that Tristan surrenders the weapon to Image not available her. When he asks her why she wants it, she reveals that Morgan intends to bring about Tristan’s death with the weapon. Tristan cannot believe that this is true; ‘he said quite truly that this was made-up and a lie’.15 Laughing, he responds that only God knows when he will die, and hands over the weapon. Tristan does indeed die a painful and lingering death at the hands of Mark, inflicted with this very lance. Morgan soaks . . Mark fatally wounds Tristan the blade in poison, and Mark thrusts it through Tristan as he sits harping before Yseult in her chamber.16 Emmanuelle Baumgartner suggests that Morgan ultimately triumphs over both Arthur’s and Mark’s kingdoms: the enchantress shows Arthur Lancelot’s paintings, provoking his ambush of the lovers; she sends Mark the poisoned spear so that he eliminates his most outstanding knight.17 Finally, though, it is the men who determine how they react to the symbolic objects Morgan provides. Mark need never use the spear; he chooses to kill Tristan in a sudden access of jealousy, which he regrets later, and which Huneson’s death thematically anticipates. Arthur need not act on the narrative of the wall paintings; after all Gawain and his brothers wisely reserve judgement on them, despite Morgan’s urgings, after their viewing in the Post-Vulgate Queste.18 Morgan’s tokens – the magic horn, the enigmatic shield, the wall paintings, and the poisoned lance – symbolize the privileging of sexual love over personal and kin loyalty by both Lancelot and Tristan.19 The pointless death of Huneson, brought about by a confusion between erotic love and masculine

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Anne Berthelot has suggested that the duplicated enchantress figures of the Prophesies – Sebile, the Queen of North Wales and the Dame d’Avalon – have no particular independent status in Arthurian narrative, but are largely reflections of Morgan, equipped with some new traits, the queen’s passion for Ector for example, but with recognizably Morganian characterization. Their new adventures are intended to cater for a taste for the comedic marvellous, in an audience which enjoys ‘the pleasure of identification, of recognition, of an intertextual “wink”’.81 Berthelot rightly highlights the Prophesies’ enjoyment of the marvellous and its tendency to exploit Morgan as a foil to Merlin and the Lady of the Lake. Compared with the seer and the noble upholder of chivalry, Morgan squanders her magical knowledge on sexual intrigue and small-minded acts of mischief against Arthur’s knights. After the magic contest the four enchantresses resolve to go in search of Merlin, but, unlike the Lady’s lover Méliadus, they are unable to find him, and they fade from the narrative in an unsuccessful effort to track down the source of their own powers. ‘Hunted and trembling, moving from forest to forest and only preserving her life through the power of her enchantments’, as Emmanuelle Baumgartner suggests, this Morgan neither reaches accommodation with the chivalric world, nor establishes a satisfactory alternative to it, a place where chivalry is not.82 In these later texts she finds herself either alienated from the courtly world, or challenging it in contests which, in the short term, she always loses. Yet, in the longer term, safeguarded by her magic power, Morgan and her fellowenchantresses outlive the Arthurian polity; it is they who preside over its end, as Arthur’s death-barge glides towards Avalon.

Chanson de geste Morgan’s role in chanson de geste is often merely at the level of allusion, mentioned when an originator is required for a magic object or for some other form of enchantment. Where she does make a personal appearance in the text, she is – with the exception of Rainouart, as discussed in Chapter  – usually highly supportive of chivalry and its heroes. Outside the tensions of Camelot and its courtly hierarchies, back in the original Avalonian world where Morgan’s status is unchallenged, she exercises her considerable powers to reward and cherish deserving knights. In Jaufré, the earliest Arthurian text surviving in Provençal, dating from around , an unnamed lady arranges for the poem’s hero Jaufré to be

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brought to a land lying beneath a fountain, a land which is being laid waste by a monstrous knight. Jaufré agrees to fight against this opponent and the battle is successfully concluded. The lady helps Jaufré to find his beloved, Brunissen; after their marriage the couple spend a night near the fountain. The mysterious lady emerges from the fountain to thank her saviour, introducing herself as ‘the fairy of Mont Gibel’, an epithet attached to Morgan in Floriant et Florete (see below) and Le Chevalier du papegau.83 Since Jaufré is of the same era as Chrétien, Morgan’s benevolent aspect is not surprising; the very different treatment of the same motif in La Bataille Loquifer demonstrates the extent to which her character deterioriates during the thirteenth century. In the later text she is subordinate to Arthur, sleeps with a knight who has no intention of remaining in her service, and is treacherous and vengeful, where the earlier Morgan is grateful, courtly, chaste and generous. Yet in chanson de geste Morgan generally retains her benevolent aspect; the denigration that her character undergoes in romance is absent, thanks to the genre’s essential conservatism, and the absence of the Lady of the Lake, whose appearance has the effect of polarizing the depiction of enchantresses towards representation as wholly good or wholly evil. Thus two later texts, the thirteenth-century Floriant et Florete and the various redactions of Ogier le Danois, place Morgan in the unlikely role (for romance audiences) of fairy godmother. In Floriant et Florete she is a kindly and disinterested adoptive mother, fulfilling the same functions as the Lady of the Lake in the Lancelot.84 The newborn Floriant is rescued by three fairies when his mother, fleeing the seneschal who murdered her husband, and who intends to marry her, gives birth to him in a forest. Floriant is given a chivalric education; after an important lecture on the duties of knighthood delivered by Morgan in imitation of the Lady of the Lake’s disquisition on chivalry in the Lancelot, he is sent out into the world to become an outstanding hero. At the end of his life, Floriant is drawn back to Morgan’s castle, Montgibel, while he is hunting a white stag, always a marker of fairy presence.85 Recognizing his foster-mother, he learns that his life is over; ‘Friend, you must die and depart from this world’, Morgan announces.86 To escape death he must remain in the Other World castle with Morgan, and with his wife Florete, whom Morgan brings to join him. Arthur is expected to arrive later. As Harf-Lancner shows, in this poem Morgan is closely assimilated to the Lady of the Lake.87 She nurtures her protégé, sends him out into the world handsomely equipped when he is old enough, lectures him on chivalry, and brings him to a comfortable

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and happy life in the Other World before his strength and glory fail. Like the Lady, Morgan represses any erotic feelings she might have for her charge in the broader interests of chivalry. The fullest poetic version of Ogier le Danois dates from between  and ; a prose version was made in the late fifteenth century and printed several times during the sixteenth century.88 In this narrative, Morgan’s situation is more ambivalent. She is one of a troop of fairies who attend Ogier’s birth; speaking last, she announces that the fortunate child will have her as a lover when he is grown. Ogier has a long and heroic life in the service of Charlemagne until at the age of  he is shipwrecked and all his men die of hunger. A mysterious voice summons Ogier to the isle of Avalon, situated near the Earthly Paradise, where after various adventures he wins his way into an orchard where he eats an Other World fruit. This nearly kills him, but Morgan rescues him and restores him to health and youth with the aid of a magic ring. Ogier lives henceforth in Avalon with Morgan, as Arthur’s vassal, wearing a magic crown which takes from him his memory of life in the real world. He does indeed become Morgan’s lover and they have a son, Meurvin. Ogier fights the monster-knight Capalu (the Chapalu of La Bataille Loquifer) and overcomes him. All is not well in the human world, however. Ogier is missed, for Jerusalem has been retaken by infidel forces and France itself is under threat from Saracens. In the national interest, Morgan sends Ogier back to aid the French forces. His crown of forgetfulness is removed and he is placed under three conditions. He must keep safe a wooden brand which, like that of Meleager in Greek myth, signifies his life. If it is consumed by fire, Ogier will die. He is also warned to keep his sojourn in the Other World secret. Also, though this is not made explicit, if he removes his ring he will revert to his real age. Ogier soon discovers that time in the Other World passes more slowly than in the human world, and all his kin are dead. He experiences various difficulties in not breaching the taboos and Morgan is frequently forced to intervene to restore his magic ring. In the verse redaction, Ogier grows tired of the corruption and decadence of the modern world and flings his brand on the fire. As it burns, and his body crumples in death, Morgan arrives in a flaming chariot, seizes the brand from the fire and whisks her lover back to Avalon. In the prose version, Ogier is on the verge of marrying a queen as a reward for his chivalric deeds when Morgan appears and spirits him away. The brand remains in the possession of the Abbey of St Pharon at Meaux, where it is well

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guarded from fire, in recognition of the feats of arms Ogier performed against the Saracens in the name of Christianity. In Ogier, Morgan fulfils both fairy-godmother and fairy-mistress roles, but, despite her amorous self-interest, she willingly allows Ogier to live a long and heroic life, and is sufficiently concerned about events in France to encourage him to return in an hour of national peril. Morgan constantly intervenes to save Ogier from the consequences of his own human carelessness, disregarding the normally immutable rules of the Other World which entail serious, often fatal, consequences when they are breached. Morgan will not stand for her lover marrying a mortal woman, but she offers powerful support for all his chivalric activities. Her influence is far-reaching, employed for the benefit of her lover, but also for the national good, conscripted into a patriotic programme of self-sacrifice and public-spiritedness in the face of external threat. In Jean d’Outremeuse’s Ly myreur des histors, Ogier saves Paris, besieged by Saracens, with the aid of Arthur, Gawain and a fairy army, but subsequently breaks his first two taboos, then enters a monastery. Tired of living, he throws his life token on a fire, but, by the will of God, Morgan appears and takes him away to the Other World whence he will return if Christianity is in danger, like Arthur and other once and future kings: Charlemagne and Friedrich Barbarossa.89 Ogier le Danois recruits Morgan to the Christian party in the face of Muslim threat; according to Jean d’Outremeuse, Morgan returns Ogier to France on the orders of St Michael. In Huon de Bordeaux, and its sequel Esclarmonde, Morgan’s connections range further and higher. Oberon, king of the fairies, who is only as tall as a three-year-old, thanks to the intervention of a malevolent fairy at his christening, is the son of Morgan and Julius Caesar. Oberon bequeaths his kingdom to his protégé, Huon, but when Huon comes to accept fealty from his vassals, they object to the fact that his wife Esclarmonde is not of fairy lineage. Morgan comes to Huon’s aid; with three other fairies, she carries Esclarmonde to Paradise to ask Jesus Christ for assistance. Pausing to plunge Esclarmonde into the fountain of youth so she will retain her appearance at the perfect age of  for all eternity, they hasten to Christ, who willingly transforms Esclarmonde in a ritual which strongly recalls baptism, as Harf-Lancner notes.90 For Jeanne Wathelet-Willem Esclarmonde is ‘particularly striking for its naive attempt to Christianise Faery in order to make it acceptable to a Christian world’.91 The later chansons de geste, with the exception of La Bataille Loquifer, return Morgan to the courtly and chivalric ethic which she opposes

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in thirteenth-century and later romances. Morgan’s return to Avalon (a place in Jaufré that she has not yet left) insulates her from the direct consequences of chivalric behaviour that we see in the romances. She no longer has to deal directly with the honour-driven displays of violence, the damage that chivalry does to male–female intimacy and to women’s exercise of autonomy. An Avalon-based Morgan can choose which knights she invites into her territory, testing and rewarding them with her love, with eternal youth, or even, at the sacrifice of her own erotic interests, by uniting them to their human loves. The woman who does not have to live in the courtly world can, from afar, become its upholder. The Morgan of the Tristan en Prose and its derivatives loses her meaning as a principled critic and sometime opponent of chivalry whom we encountered in Chapter . Her roles are determined by a conventionalized clerical misogyny; the alliance between cleric and enchantress suggested in Chapter  dissolves in the misogyny of the later texts. As Roberta Krueger remarks, ‘if professional differences distance the clerk from the chivalric ideals of male nobles, his gender separates him more acutely from the feminine culture of noblewomen’.92 Morgan becomes an unthinking enemy of chivalric society rather than its critic and corrector. In chansons de geste, however, at the same period, she is subject to a nostalgic re-imagining. Returning to her origins as a benevolent island healer, recast as a fairy in line with Celtic traditions of the Other World, she devotes herself to upholding chivalry and circumventing the constraints of mortality, as she did in the Vita Merlini. In the Tavola Ritonda, she becomes a prophetic substitute for Merlin, cognizant of a future in which chivalry will no longer avail, when her healing skills and island retreat will once more offer a recuperative space after the catastrophe which awaits the knights of both Cornwall and Camelot.

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Viviane, the Damoiselle Cacheresse and the Lady of the Lake

T

   of the medieval world Merlin has two or perhaps three students, all women: Viviane, Morgan and the Lady of the Lake.1 Merlin weighs up the characters of the last two in the Prophesies de Merlin: Morgan was born in the fire of lechery. And I believe that the lovely Lady of the Lake was born somewhere near Paradise. Morgan plans and carries out wicked deeds. And she of the Lake does good deeds. The former has good knights killed, while the other gives them comfort and help. She brings help to orphans and Morgan destroys them, to spite their fathers and mothers.2

Paradoxically, it is not the lascivious pursuer of evil deeds and persecutor of orphans who causes Merlin’s downfall – relations between Merlin and Morgan remain cordial across the majority of medieval texts, even after their initial love affair has run its course.3 Rather, in what Nathalie Koble has called ‘a schema of perversion’, it is the virtuous friend of good knights and succourer of orphans, of Lancelot and his cousins Bors and Lionel, who seals Merlin away from the Arthurian world which he has protected and whose history he has chronicled.4 The earliest accounts of Merlin figure him in a strangely ambivalent relation to women; the belief that chastity and prophecy go together informs Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Vita Merlini. In this text Merlin’s marriage is destroyed by his need for solitude and periodic fits of madness. In contrast, he maintains an unusual relationship with his sister. Despite revealing her

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adultery to her husband in a clairvoyant moment, he takes up residence with her when he finally retreats from the world.5 It is likely that Geoffrey was drawing on earlier northern English traditions of the seer as a wild man of the woods; that Merlin at times should behave in this way persists even in the Merlin. In one episode in this text, Merlin the Wildman can only be enticed out of the forest to explain mysterious events at the court of Julius Caesar if a rich feast is provided by a woman disguised as a man; thus he is captured and taken to the emperor’s court.6 In Robert de Boron’s Merlin, Merlin steers clear of women altogether, apart from the necessary and redemptive figure of his mother. Merlin’s mother’s insistence on the baptism of her strangely hairy and talkative child saves him from the consequences of his diabolical conception. As a baby, Merlin consoles her for her plight; his clairvoyant powers allow her to be acquitted of the charge of fornication and saved from burning.7 Nor is a woman always behind Merlin’s disappearance; certain texts – the Didot or Prose Perceval and the Livre d’Artus – record Merlin’s voluntary and supposedly temporary withdrawal from the world into his esplumoir.8 This word of indeterminate meaning may well be an apt metaphorical application of a technical term drawn from falconry: a private cage where a moulting bird, uncertain in temper and unable to be flown, is kept in tranquillity until it is in full feather once more.9 However, in most medieval sources Merlin’s departure from the world is permanent and by no means willed by the sage – and a woman is responsible. Which woman it is who removes Merlin from the Arthurian world, and why, is the subject of this chapter. The enclosure story is complicated by two factors: first, in the earliest text that mentions Merlin’s disappearance, the Lancelot, the story is very briefly narrated and the deed is said to be the work of Lancelot’s guardian, the Lady of the Lake. Second, the story develops differently in subsequent texts: a girl variously called Viviane, Ninianne, Nymenche or Nimuë sets out to learn magic from Merlin and then encloses him in a place from which he cannot escape. In the majority – but by no means all – of Arthurian texts that tell the story, the girl then becomes known as the Lady of the Lake and goes on to abduct and raise the baby Lancelot. Malory, for example, has a very brief version of the enclosure story, but, as he suppresses all detail of Lancelot’s early life, there is no suggestion of a special bond between his Lady or Damsel of the Lake and Arthur’s greatest hero.

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The Wise Man in Love The idea that when the wise man falls into the folly of loving he falls heavily and disastrously is a popular one in medieval legend.10 Stories associated with Aristotle and Virgil begin to circulate in the twelfth century or slightly later. Aristotle chides his pupil Alexander (the Great) for his dalliance with the lovely Phyllis; Phyllis in revenge swears to seduce the old tutor and succeeds. The besotted old man lets the girl put a bridle on him and ride him round the garden like a horse, to the amusement of the watching Alexander.11 Virgil, thought to be a magician in popular medieval tradition, agreed to be hauled up the outside of a tower in a basket for a rendezvous with his lady, but the treacherous woman left him hanging there all night to be mocked by the populace of Rome when morning came.12 Jean Markale has plausibly suggested that the history of Peter Abélard, the greatest philosopher of the mid-twelfth century, who was brought to ruin through the sexual irresistibility of his lively and intelligent pupil Héloïse, would have been fresh in contemporary minds and may have contributed to the development of the Merlin story.13 The comparison with Abélard and Héloïse emphasises an important distinction: the wise man’s attraction is a response not just to beauty, but to an answering intelligence, a readiness to learn, which goes beyond the mere sensual ensnaring of Aristotle by Phyllis’s charms.14 The fundamental exchange at the heart of the Merlin enclosure episode is of power, in the form of magical knowledge, in return for sexual intimacy – or at least for the illusion of an intimate relationship. Once the women associated with Merlin have gained what they want from him, they are at liberty to decide whether – and on what terms – they want to continue the relationship with him. The pattern of the sage turned fool for love remains constant, but the characterization and motivation of the different protagonists vary considerably. How Merlin and his lover are perceived is determined by the relative importance in the text of Lancelot, in particular the attention paid to his childhood in the care of the Lady of the Lake, and by the prominence of Morgan. There’s a complicated interaction between Merlin’s pupils, polarized towards good or evil, and the depiction of the sage himself. Some accounts emphasise his diabolic paternity, suggesting that his mistreatment is deserved; others stress the effectiveness of his baptism in turning his prophetic powers for good. The consequences of Merlin’s disappearance from the Arthurian world are relatively limited. Arthur is already safely established on the throne

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and married to Guenevere; he no longer needs Merlin’s strategic advice. In no medieval version of the story is Merlin’s beloved permitted to take over his role as political adviser, or as prophetic connection to the worlds of past and future.15 As we shall see, larger themes reflecting contemporary cultural preoccupations – the value of virginity, relations between the sexes in courtly culture, the status of the cleric as intellectual, and the real-world political implications of prophetic literature – are foregrounded by the narratives of Merlin’s end.

The Prose Lancelot: Merlin and Nymenche The Lady of the Lake was originally a young woman from Brittany called Nymenche or Ninianne (in the Vulgate Lancelot), Niniene (in the Non-Cyclical Lancelot).16 Merlin falls in love with her. She promises to be his lover in return for initiation into magic, but she uses the spells she learns, first, to put Merlin to sleep so he cannot take her virginity and, finally, to enclose him in a cave in the Perilous Forest, where he sleeps still.17 The identification of the Lady of the Lake and the beloved of Merlin in successive versions of the Lancelot is more convenient than plausible; Gaston Paris calls the idea ‘not very happy’.18 Fundamentally Merlin is invoked to explain – or explain away – the Lady’s magical powers: ‘The maiden who carried Lancelot off into the lake was a fairy. At that time all those women who knew about enchantment and magical tricks were called fairies.’19 Already literate when she encounters Merlin, the girl defends herself against his desire because she is wise and courteous, behaving as any well-schooled young woman would.20 We saw in Chapter  how Arthurian authors, at least after Geoffrey and Hartmann, emphasise that the magic of the enchantresses is learned and is not a sign of supernatural origin. The clarification is important in the Lancelot precisely because the baby’s protector seems originally to have been a sea fairy. In the Swiss German romance Lanzelet (–), the earliest surviving Lancelot biography, the hero is reared by ‘a wise mermaid’ whose powers are surely innate.21 Lanzelet’s decidedly unusual childhood is discussed further below. Anne Berthelot suggests that the Lancelot work[s] very hard to erase all suspicion of [the Lady’s] connection to the supernatural: the lake is but a mirage, the lady but a courtly damsel who happens to have pursued a course of study allowing her to know the qualities of plants and stones.22

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The Lady’s anxiety about her virginity, a consideration which, as HarfLancner shows, is absent from earlier accounts of fairies in French romance, seems likely to be a clerical addition to the water-fairy tale, but its introduction unequivocally shapes most later treatments of the episode.23 The Lady is an unmitigated force for good in the Lancelot, though she acts ruthlessly in pursuit of her larger goals. If the Lady is to be virtuous, then her treatment of Merlin must be justified by a corresponding denigration of her lover. Thus Merlin is shown as deserving of deceit: his diabolic ancestry is summarized and his perverse mother shown as giving herself enthusiastically to an invisible demon. There is no question of penitence on her part, nor baptism for her baby, such as we find in Robert de Boron’s version and the Estoire Merlin.24 As this Merlin grows to adulthood he lacks any redeeming features: ‘He had his father’s deceitful and disloyal nature, and knew all that it is possible to know of every perverse knowledge.’25 To have dealings with such a creature is to run a grave risk; women’s desire for forbidden learning usually exacts a sexual price, one which Morgan and (in the Prophesies) the Dame d’Avalon are willing to pay. The male equivalent of the sexual corruption of the enchantress by the demonic is diabolical ancestry: magical knowledge for the man is figured as genetically transmitted. Occult knowledge is implanted within the body through unholy penetration, either of the enchantress or of the enchanter’s mother. The Lady of the Lake escapes with her honour intact and her knowledge expanded, to use her powers for the benefit of Lancelot and his cousins. Guenevere, and eventually Arthur and his entire army when they come to fight against Lancelot’s enemy, Claudas, will all benefit by association. The Lady is unwilling – and indeed uninvited – to assume Merlin’s protective role with regard to the Arthurian kingdom. This is a political position to which a woman cannot decently aspire, so she limits her sorties from the Lake and participation in the chivalric world to interventions on Lancelot’s behalf. The Lady’s maternal role in Lancelot’s life is discussed further below.

The Estoire de Merlin : Merlin and Viviane The Lancelot’s outline of Merlin’s disappearance is developed with markedly differing interpretations of both characters’ motivations in the Estoire Merlin and the Post-Vulgate Suite de Merlin.26 When he first encounters Viviane in the Estoire, Merlin already knows that she embodies his destiny. He journeys to

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the forest of Diana, in the shape of a young squire, and finds the -yearold Viviane by a fountain.27 Boasting of his magical powers, Merlin offers to conjure up a castle under siege for Viviane’s amusement, producing an elaborate spectacle. Impressed, Viviane offers Merlin a straightforward erotic and romantic bargain, to be ‘your lady love and your friend forever, without any wrong-doing or baseness, for as long as I live’, if he will teach her all his tricks.28 The company of squires and ladies from the magic castle dance elegantly and sing a song with the refrain: ‘truly love begins in joy and ends in sorrow’, a warning that Merlin ignores, but Viviane heeds, determining that the love affair will not end in sorrow for her.29 After dancing together and singing for a long time, as in the magic carole set up by the clerk Guinebal later in the text, the phantom men and women separate to pursue different activities: the men jousting and tilting, the ladies resting on the grass and watching them.30 This division underlines the social separation the chivalric life imposes upon heterosexual couples: men participate in the public world of the court, women can only watch and admire. Shortly afterwards the illusion disappears; Merlin says that he has things to do elsewhere and departs. Like the Lady of the Lake in the Lancelot, Viviane uses her growing magical skills to make sure that Merlin cannot take her virginity. Although in Merlin’s defence the author reports that he finds no evidence that he ever ‘demanded shameful things from her or from any other woman’, Viviane does not trust in his courtliness and self-restraint after she learns about his birth. Nor does the Estoire suggest that Merlin is deluded into believing that he has actually made love with Viviane, unlike the Merlin of the Prophesies de Merlin, whose deception is complete in this regard. Once Arthur’s throne is secure, the Round Table established and the threat from Rome nullified, Merlin is ready to take his leave of the courtly world; his farewell visits to Master Blaise, his confessor and the amanuensis who has been writing down Arthurian history at his pupil’s dictation, and to Arthur are shot through by ambivalence about his impending departure.31 Viviane decides that she wants to keep Merlin with her always; clearly not, in this text, because she hates him or because she desires to learn more from him: her period of study is in effect complete. Although she has to wheedle the crucial spell, ‘how I might keep a man imprisoned without a tower or walls or irons, through wizardry’, out of Merlin, she advances the argument that mutual love demands mutual sacrifice and trust: ‘And since I love you and you love me, isn’t it right that you should do my will and I should do yours?’32 Merlin offers to establish

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a sanctuary where they can remain together ‘in joy and in pleasure’, but Viviane wants the knowledge to create such a place and retain control over it for herself. As Merlin sleeps contentedly in her lap, under a hawthorn tree in white blossom, Viviane casts the spell, making an invisible tower where her lover must remain. When Merlin awakens he charges her not with having deceived him, for her aims have been clear throughout, but that she will have betrayed him if she does not now stay with him. Viviane promises to do so in terms of true affection: ‘Dear friend, I will come here often and you will hold me in your arms and I you. And you will do forever what you please.’33 And she does indeed keep her promise; ‘for few days or nights went by when she was not with him’, the narrator reports.34 Merlin knows his fate in advance; though he does not entirely welcome it, he does not resist it, and he and Viviane openly discuss the reasons why she wishes him to be enclosed. Although she will not give herself to Merlin quickly, Viviane finally keeps the promise she has made to him that they will be lovers. Virginity has no particular importance in the Estoire; neither Viviane nor the narrator mentions it, and the proof she advances of her love for Merlin, ‘I have left father and mother to hold you in my arms day and night’, evokes the language of the marriage ceremony rather than the rhetoric of chastity.35 As in many exemplary medieval treatments of fin’amors, interpretation of the episode is baffled by the text’s refusal to give us access to Viviane’s own thoughts.36 The narrator’s assurance that she does keep Merlin company in his tower allows us to assume that eventually she loves him as he loves her. It’s important to distinguish Merlin’s sincerely loving partner in this text from later versions; this Viviane is not ‘a scheming and ungrateful adolescent’, as Paul Zumthor unfairly labels her. Critics have often lumped all the versions of Merlin’s lady together, taking no account of Viviane’s demand for a mutual balance of power within the relationship, but rather assenting to the proverbial belief expressed by the narrator that ‘women have one more wile than the devil’.37 Compared with the consistently satirical view of female cunning which the Prophesies de Merlin puts forward in its depiction of this episode, as we shall see below, such misogynist proverbs are deployed with considerable restraint in the Estoire. When the Estoire Merlin encounters his Viviane, it is not by chance, for he has foreseen his fate, and his initial reaction to her is, as Bea Lundt points out, to fall into an interior argument: ‘he said to himself that it would be great folly if he fell asleep in sin so that he would thus lose his mind and his

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knowledge to get pleasure from a girl and ruin her and lose God.’38 Fear of sin has motivated Merlin since his initial escape from the heritage of his diabolical father through baptism; his ‘mind and knowledge’ are part of that heritage, though redeemed by their application in the furtherance of Arthur’s rise to power. Can Merlin gain the love of a woman without sin and without losing his ‘mind and knowledge’? The answer the narrative provides is a courtly ‘yes’, given that he is willing to share his learning and to refrain from making sexual demands until his lady freely surrenders herself. Lundt suggests that Merlin emerges in the Estoire as a new kind of hero: the intellectual whose prowess is not physical and embodied, but mental and abstract. Beyond the life of the mind, however, the prophet, like his chivalric peers, seeks status through courtly display and heterosexual relationships.39 The Estoire’s enclosure story addresses exactly the same questions of how to reconcile the private world of love with the demands of the honour-competition in the masculine, social domain that the Val sans Retour makes so explicit.40 Like the fairy mistresses in Lanval-type stories, Viviane recognizes that compromise between the masculine and feminine spheres is not possible in the courtly domain unless the woman is prepared to risk exposure and abandonment, or the man loss of honour and accusations of effeminacy.41 Another space is necessary where the two lovers can meet on equal terms. Viviane insists on creating this herself, for she has seen at their first meeting the insubstantiality of the castle that Merlin is willing to build. The tower denotes a new sexual space; in comparison with the feminized caves and tombs where Merlin is confined in other versions, the tower is both phallic and yet under her control. Viviane can enter and leave as she pleases; sexual surrender takes place there, but on her terms. Without marriage, virginity is traded for vulnerability to social ruin, unless the woman can bind the man to her, at the expense of his freedom of action. The dilemma is not, as in the other versions of the story, in balancing the demands of the body and of Christian virtue. The Estoire tale looks closely at how power works in courtly heterosexual relationships, and, as in Chapter , it confirms that a woman needs to gain ‘the power of words’ if she is to compete with the demands of the male social world.42 The Estoire author introduces a new and ultimately productive element to the ancient theme of the sage beguiled by women: Viviane’s father, Dyonas, is the godson of Diana, ‘the goddess of the woods’. Elsewhere in the Estoire she is named as the chief deity of the Saracen world, and a fierce protector of her own and others’ chastity.43 Dyonas’s godmother belongs to the

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past: the events involving Viviane are foretold as happening after her death. Nevertheless, Diana’s godson’s daughter inherits ‘a strongly self-conscious and unconventional femininity’.44 This Viviane is less attached to hunting and the solitude and wildness of the woods than the damoiselle cacheresse (the lady huntress) of the Suite de Merlin, but she has more independence than the damoiselle. Viviane’s freedom of action, as Lundt points out, is indicated by her name, for its meaning, whether in Welsh, as one manuscript reports, or, more mystifyingly, in the exotically pagan Chaldean language, is given as ‘I will do none of these things.’45 Viviane is thus no catspaw of fate but a knowledgeable actor in shaping her own destiny and that of Merlin. This unique characterization of Viviane in the Estoire, the only medieval text in which she remains separate from the Lady of the Lake, suggests that, if the relationship is based on earlier accounts of the romance between Merlin and Morgan, this version escapes clerical moralizing to develop into a richly complex portrait of fin’amors refracted through a female subjectivity.46

The Suite de Merlin : Merlin and the Damoiselle Cacheresse Diana also figures in the account of Merlin’s end in the Post-Vulgate Suite de Merlin. Yet this Diana is no longer herself; she is lascivious rather than chaste, though her favourite pastime of hunting is shared by the woman who overcomes Merlin here. The episode begins when a young woman described as the damoiselle cacheresse suddenly erupts into Arthur’s court on a high feast day, dressed as an antique huntress.47 The girl is chasing a hart; her brachet (a specialized type of hunting dog) and a pack of hounds are all in pursuit. During the commotion, a strange knight rides off with the brachet. While the girl complains about this, another knight enters and abducts her. Merlin decrees an adventure: hounds, hart, girl and brachet must all be brought back to the court. After a series of interlaced episodes, King Pellinor wins the girl back from her captor and returns with her to court. She reveals herself to be the daughter of the rulers of Northumberland and remains at court for some time. Her name is Niviene, and, says the author, anyone who has read Robert de Boron will know that she is that very Lady of the Lake who reared Lancelot.48 Merlin falls in love with beautiful -year-old Niviene. She fears he may overcome her by enchantment and take her virginity, but Merlin ‘had no desire to do this, for he did nothing he thought might grieve her’.49 The girl

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bargains with him; he must teach her everything she demands and undertake nothing against her. Merlin willingly swears, but, unlike Viviane, she offers no promises in return. Nevertheless, Merlin hopes that she will consent to sleep with him of her own free will, and teaches her ‘necromancy and enchantment’.50 When the girl is summoned home by her father, Merlin offers to accompany her; en route they visit Lancelot’s mother, where Niviene sees her future charge for the first time. Merlin suggests that they visit the Lake of Diana. The girl responds enthusiastically: ‘Anything of Diana’s would please me … for all her life she loved the pleasures of the forest as much as I do or more.’51 When they reach the lake, Merlin rehearses a striking tale of love and betrayal. Diana loved a certain Faunus who lived with her in the forest in a manor house. After two years Diana fell in love with another knight, Felix. Fearing that Faunus would attack her new lover, she resolved to kill him, ‘by poison or other means’, a phrase which the damoiselle and Merlin both employ later in the episode.52 Nearby is a healing spring which flows into the tomb of a wicked enchanter. After a hunting injury, Faunus is anxious to immerse himself in the waters of the tomb, but Diana has secretly had the tomb emptied. She offers him an alternative treatment within the tomb, with healing herbs, but once the lid is lowered boiling lead is poured in until Faunus is dead. When Felix learns of Diana’s treatment of his predecessor he cuts off her head and throws her body in the lake.53 The damoiselle makes no comment on the story, only enquiring about the fate of Diana’s manor – destroyed by Faunus’s father in revenge. She charges Merlin to build her just such a manor and she will remain there for ever, in a forest retreat where, Merlin hopes, she will grant him her love. This time Merlin does not conjure a castle out of thin air, but rather sends for masons and carpenters to fulfil Niviene’s demands. Merlin does enchant the place, however, so that those who are not of the household will see only the lake and not the buildings. From this moment forward, Merlin addresses the girl as damoiselle or Dame de lac.54 The plan to return to her father’s is abandoned: Niviene has now achieved freedom for herself, if she could only be rid of Merlin. Niviene feels no gratitude: ‘there was nobody in the world she hated so mortally as she did Merlin, because she knew well that he desired her maidenhead.’55 Merlin’s power has already begun to diminish; he cannot read the girl’s thoughts, and though he senses he is doomed if he returns to Britain, he cannot detect from which quarter danger may come. Merlin regards himself as having left his political life behind to be with his lady, but through

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his clairvoyance he becomes aware of the danger to Arthur which Morgan’s plot with Accolon presents.56 When the damoiselle learns of Arthur’s peril she urges Merlin to journey to the king’s rescue. Merlin agrees, ‘and yet I think I’m being foolish’.57 Image not available Once back in Britain, Merlin and Niviene find that the shortest way to Logres lies through a perilous forest, where two enchanters waylay travellers by playing magical harps. Merlin . . Niviene and overcomes the enchanters, confining Merlin meet two enchanters them in ditches which he fills with sulphur and seals with slabs of stone. Like the story of Faunus and Diana, this is a rehearsal for Merlin’s own entombment; the sulphur consumes the bodies of the enchanters just as the poisoned herbs killed Faunus. The doubled motifs of burial alive followed by destruction of the body point forward to Merlin’s own end. Niviene and Merlin continue on their way. Merlin still retains his respect for Niviene’s virginity, in contrast to the Lancelot versions; ‘he did not dare ask her to do anything for him, because he knew well that she was still a virgin’.58 No spells are needed to ward off Merlin; his own fear of sin and loss of his lady’s regard is enough. Further into the Perilous Forest they come to a bleak valley. Merlin seizes the opportunity to invite Niviene into a small, private dwelling, ‘the loveliest little chamber that I know’, chiselled out of living rock, and sealed with iron doors. The chamber had been the home of another pair of lovers whose loyalty to one another was unparalleled, and who, dying on the same day, were buried together in a tomb within the further reaches of the chamber. Merlin’s description of the chamber playfully suggests the locked doors of Niviene’s virginity, entry into that ‘loveliest little chamber’ is his aim. Niviene seems responsive. Merlin opens the lovers’ tomb for her to inspect the shrouded bodies within and Niviene commands that their beds be made up in the chamber. Merlin has come as close as he ever will to sexual union with the damoiselle, bringing her through the symbolic iron doors and eliciting playful talk of ‘pleasure’ and ‘delight’. But Niviene enchants him into a troubled sleep, and then, calling her retinue, explains to them her hatred

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and fear of him. They throw Merlin ‘like a clod of earth’ into the open tomb of the lovers and slam down its lid. Closing the doors, the damoiselle goes on her way to avert Arthur’s battle with Accolon. When king Bademagu comes past four days later, Merlin is still alive and able to speak. The king cannot lift the lid; Merlin assures him that no one can rescue him except she who put him inside.59 Merlin is sorrowful when he realizes that he has been condemned to death by a woman’s deviousness; her mind had overcome his. In the Suite account Niviene will not abandon her fear and hatred of Merlin; nor can her objection to his birth be overcome by material or emotional manifestations of his love for her. ‘I could not have the heart to love him, if he made me mistress of all the wealth under the throne [of Heaven], because I know that he is the son of the devil’, she says to herself.60 This Merlin is very different from the demonic figure in the Lancelot accounts. Courtly and patient in the face of Niviene’s reluctance, he fulfils his lady’s every whim, mildly reproaching her on their last night that he has had little reward for his service. His clouded prophetic vision sees that returning to Britain will be fatal for him, yet, in order to save the chivalric world, he sets out, as Bogdanow notes, sacrificing himself for love of Arthur, not for the undeserving damoiselle.61 The lady herself has the ruthlessness of Diana, whose story partly foreshadows her own. Suggestive though the tale of Diana’s disposal of her unwanted lover is, Niviene’s incarceration of Merlin is a brilliant improvisation on the theme of entombment. Inspired by the enchanters’ fates, she makes ingenious and ironic use of the tomb of the loyal lovers so conveniently to hand. Niviene works her enchantment sparingly; she employs a general sleep-charm acquired during her studies, while her retinue perform the physical labour of throwing the sleeping sage into the tomb and manoeuvring the slab back on top. Merlin has come as close as he ever will to sexual responsiveness on her part when she perceives her opportunity finally to be rid of him. Zumthor notes the moral descent of the Lady of the Lake from the Lancelot: ‘the good, chivalric Lady of the Lake has fallen to this depth of viciousness’.62 The clear-cut certainties of the Lancelot, where Merlin is lecherous and the Lady commendably concerned for her virtue, are complicated in the Suite. Merlin takes very seriously both his soul’s welfare and his lady’s happiness; the woman proves incapable of making allowance for the possibility of redemption, rejecting Merlin as a lover only because of his diabolical lineage. The virginity theme introduced in the Lancelot is strongly emphasized through the addition

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of the Diana subtext borrowed from the Estoire, used by the Suite author to shape a distinctive view of virginity as antisocial and unpraiseworthy. Niviene can see only two possibilities in love: the lechery of Diana or her own icy Image not available virginity. Trust and affection are strikingly absent from this relationship; the story is one of calculating exploitation and helpless passivity. This Lady’s treatment of Merlin destroys her as an effective force for good . . Niviene has her in the later Post-Vulgate Cycle. She arretainers place Merlin in the tomb rives at the fight between Arthur and Accolon in time to save the king, and intervenes to warn him against Morgan’s poisoned mantle, completing the sequence of events which she and Merlin had set out from Brittany to thwart. Although Niviene assures the king of her support because of his devotion to chivalry, she quickly leaves for her own territory, timing her departure before the sorrowful news of Merlin’s death is reported at court.63 Thereafter one or two maidens who are her followers perform helpful services for certain knights, but she herself is not seen again.64

The Livre d’Artus: Merlin and Niniane The account of Merlin’s disappearance in the Livre d’Artus is, like the text itself, incomplete.65 The Livre d’Artus patterns the first meeting of Merlin and Niniane on the Estoire version. Like the virtuous lover of the Post-Vulgate Suite, Merlin never tries to molest Niniane, yet she regularly enchants him into a magic sleep as a precaution. Niniane cultivates Merlin primarily for his occult knowledge: she passes on the magic she acquires to her cousin Lunete, a major character in Chrétien’s Yvain. Lunete’s magical powers are said to explain the marvellous spring in Yvain; she devised it, apparently, as a means of keeping her lover engaged in an adventure which does not remove him from her. When water is poured on to a stone at the spring, it summons a guardian (presumably Lunete’s lover) whom the challenger must fight. The marvellous spring is thus assimilated to the familiar pattern of the Joie de la Cort episode; Lunete finds

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a compromise between the knight’s demand for honourable combat and the lady’s desire for intimacy.66 Indeed, Merlin is revealed to be the very Herdsman of the Beasts who directs Yvain’s cousin Calogrenant to the adventure of the magic spring; the episode becomes a kind of prequel to Yvain.67 Lunete’s cousin Brandus becomes Niniane’s lover. She uses her magic to conceal his existence from Merlin, but the sage knows that he has been betrayed, and consequently takes up with Morgan: ‘one of the most lascivious women that there was in all Great Britain’.68 Morgan has come to seek him after her thwarted affair with Guiomar and proves a receptive student. Merlin neglects Niniane for her, causing Niniane to make an effort to recapture his affections.69 Once Merlin returns to her, Niniane disappears from the narrative. It is clear that Niniane will destroy Merlin: he will ‘meet his end through a woman with whom he was taking pleasure’, but this does not occur in the surviving text. Merlin continues to appear in various forms; at one point he retreats to an esplumeor, here not a prison but a site of adventure, where maidens refuse to answer the questions of knights who come there.70 Lundt suggests that the casual allusions to his end indicate that its circumstances were already well enough known for the audience to supply the details for themselves.71

The Prophesies de Merlin : Merlin and the Lady The Lancelot, the Suite de Merlin and the Livre d’Artus are all sources for the Prophesies de Merlin.72 Though its account of Merlin’s entombment is based largely on the Suite, the distinction between sinful, mortal body and eternal, prophetic spirit made in the Livre d’Artus strongly shapes this text: for Merlin continues to prophesy long after his physical demise. His death marks a central point in the narrative; thereafter he conveys his insights from the tomb to the Lady of the Lake’s lover, Méliadus, a brother or half-brother of Tristan.73 Abandoned by his mother, the Queen of Scotland, Méliadus had been raised and rescued by the Lady’s mother.74 Merlin’s regard for the Lady has been cited above; his love blinds him to her treacherous intentions towards him. The Lady’s hatred for Merlin is poorly motivated. The text states baldly: ‘This Merlin loved the Lady of the Lake with all his power and with all his heart, the lady hated him as much or more.’75 Some previous dealings of the Lady and Merlin seem to be taken for granted in the Prophesies; she has already learned all the magic she needs from him, and has no intention of giving him her love or sleeping with him. Yet the two manage a kind of modus vivendi; Merlin

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creates a dwelling-place for them in the forest in a richly furnished cave, where they spend fifteen months together. Merlin is secure in the knowledge that his death can only be encompassed by a ‘white serpent’; this cannot signify the Lady, for he has, he believes, taken her virginity, an illusion the Prophesies author encourages the reader to entertain by repressing information about the Lady’s magical defences.76 The Lady and Merlin might have remained quietly together in their forest retreat, had it not been for Morgan, who, in an echo of the Livre d’Artus, comes searching for Merlin. The Lady hears the hunting horns of Morgan’s party and fears that Morgan will prevail upon Merlin to align himself with her associate Claudas, Lancelot’s mortal enemy. Since this would prove fatal to Lancelot and his cousins, who are already under her protection in her lake dwelling, Merlin must be put out of Morgan’s way. As in the Suite, the cave contains a tomb, but there is no inspiring history of lovers faithful to death. Tricking Merlin into climbing inside, ostensibly to see whether it will be big enough for them to share, the Lady quickly seals the tomb with magic and admits to Merlin that she is the white serpent about which he had prophesied. Merlin is mortified by the failure of his prophetic powers, for he is certain he has sullied her whiteness by sleeping with her. She assures him that there has been no failure; since, as she reminds him, the first spell he taught her was to cause someone to fall asleep, she has used the charm to protect her virginity. Merlin professes relief, declaring that his joy that he has not slept with her and that his prophetic powers have not played him false is greater than his grief and anger at being enclosed. He asks the Lady to go to his scribe, Master Antoine, and confirm the rightness of his prophecies. Antoine should also note the proverbial lesson to be drawn from Merlin’s fate, the sage opines: A good woman and a bad woman, as Solomon said, must be kept under control, and the good and bad horse also. The woman wants the whip and the horse wants the spur.77

Merlin’s anxiety lest his prophetic powers have misled him masks the reason the Lady gives him for her action. In the Estoire Viviane justifies herself through an appeal to mutuality, suggesting that the lovers need to find a place apart from the social world. In the Lancelot and the Suite de Merlin there is no discussion; the lid is slammed down and the sage left in his enchanted sleep. In the Prophesies the Lady excuses her behaviour with an appeal to reputation. Merlin has bragged of having slept with her, and Morgan has also

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been spreading that rumour: ‘she had been called a whore by Morgan’s own mouth’.78 Merlin informs her that although his body will perish, his spirit will not and he will continue to prophesy to those who visit the tomb. The Lady keeps Merlin company until his flesh has decayed, then she returns to Lancelot and his cousins at her lake dwelling. Subsequently, Méliadus effectively blackmails the Lady into showing him Merlin’s tomb and he becomes Merlin’s new mouthpiece.79 Merlin is now philosophical about his fate, freely admitting that he would have continued to seduce young women in exchange for teaching them magic, and would thus have unleashed spells in the world which those women would have used against other equally unwise men. The Lady, observed here with some psychological acuteness, wants to be reassured that Merlin still loves her, and that he exempts her from the misogynist comments he makes about women in general. Merlin retorts that she is just like other women, tricking men ‘for their possessions and in order to slake their lust’.80 The Lady is ashamed and speaks no further to Merlin on this occasion. In a number of Prophesies manuscripts the Lady experiences genuine remorse for her treatment of Merlin.81 Discovering that Lancelot is Morgan’s prisoner, she weeps. Bors asks why and the Lady recalls how, because of Morgan, she was disloyal to one who loved her: ‘I have done something very treacherous … of which I greatly repent.’82 She offers a panegyric to Merlin’s powers, acknowledging his diabolic lineage, but explaining his redemption through baptism. Bors’s curiosity invites an overview of Merlin’s life which has been missing from the text until now. Bors reproaches his mentor: women don’t need to learn enchantment from Merlin in order to bamboozle men. Solomon’s observations show that women are always cunning and deceitful. The Lady agrees and urges Bors to chastity when he is knighted – a chastity which, apart from one occasion where he is deceived by a cunning woman, he maintains – an important reason for his success in the Grail quest.83 The redactor of the first printed edition of the Prophesies, published in , edits the text to reflect his interest in sin and penitence. Merlin’s fate is a punishment for his lechery, he suggests; when first he committed the sin, Merlin recognized it as such and did penance, but once the sin had become rooted in him Christ employed the Lady to put Merlin in a position where the Devil could not win back power over his body or his soul. Merlin asserts that this will stand to his credit on Judgement Day, when the Lady will be called upon by Christ to account for her treatment of the prophet.84

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Notwithstanding the  edition’s concern for Merlin’s salvation, what chiefly motivates the Lady is her fear that Merlin is sexually susceptible to Morgan, and that this will have consequences for her protégés. This motivation succeeds, more coherently than in the earlier texts, in integrating the role of Merlin’s mistress, keen to learn magic and exploit the sage’s powers, with the Lady’s maternal responsibilities. She will not sleep with Merlin herself, but she does not wish him to have relations with other women; in the  edition as part of her deception she pretends to be jealous of his conquests.85 Seeking to retain her monopoly over his knowledge, the Lady resents Merlin sharing his wisdom, not his body. The idea that women will readily trade sex for magical knowledge is a particular feature of this text; women’s sexuality is regarded as lustful or exploitative. Merlin’s dealings with men in the Prophesies are simply informative: he orders them to record his prophecies and answers their questions, but does not teach them magic. His lechery risks the dissemination of his magic throughout the female world; as Bors notes, and the wisdom of Solomon maintains, women already have quite enough cunning. The Prophesies make repeated reference to Solomon’s views of women, preserved in proverbial tradition. Himself no mean sorcerer in medieval belief, Solomon represents an anti-type of Merlin. Through Christ’s mercy and the Lady’s chastisement of his flesh, Merlin will gain salvation, despite his sexual profligacy; however wise he might have been, Solomon is unequivocally damned for his lechery.86 The earlier texts are little concerned with Merlin’s ultimate salvation. We have seen how he is reassimilated to the diabolic in the Lancelot, while he is courtly and well-behaved in the Estoire and the Suite de Merlin. The mortification of Merlin’s flesh, always at risk from the devils who engendered him, is a direct punishment for his lechery; the survival of his spirit gives him time to repent. Where the early-thirteenth-century Merlin is assimilated to Aristotle and Virgil, types of the pre-Christian sage who becomes a fool for love and loses his reputation, the fifteenth century juxtaposes Merlin with Solomon. Both are types of the wise man whose sin is lechery, but, in keeping with the didacticism of the Prophesies, Merlin becomes an exemplum of repentance and salvation. Meanwhile, in these episodes, if by no means consistently throughout the Prophesies, the Lady is caught between two conceptions of women. At times she figures the deceitful woman of proverbial tradition, at others she embodies a kind of chastity, but this chastity is neither the love of freedom and forest, inherited from Diana, which we see in Niviene, nor a religiously motivated esteem for virginity. The Lady’s chastity is compromised by her

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relationship with Méliadus; as both Kennedy and Harf-Lancner suggest, she adapts to the codes of the courtly world.87 Méliadus becomes an important figure in the Prophesies; care is taken to give him a history and bind him closely to the Lady in order to give him access to Merlin and allow the flow of prophecies to continue. Once he has become Merlin’s intermediary to the Arthurian court, Méliadus willingly retires to live with the Lady. He is no longer interested in the chivalric world: only the life of the mind can compete with the pleasure of intimacy with the Lady.88

The Morte Darthur : Merlin and Nenyve Malory’s treatment of Merlin’s disappearance is a highly compressed version of the Suite-account.89 Much is omitted: the lake and the underwater manor, the past histories of Diana and her lovers, and the tomb. Nenyve becomes tired of Merlin’s importuning – the courtliness of the French version has gone: And allwayes he lay aboute to have hir maydynhode, and she was ever passynge wery of him, and wolde have bene delyverde of hym, for she was aferde of hym for cause he was a devyls son, and she cowde not be skyfte [rid] of hym by no meane.

The Suite’s tomb becomes a rock; the necrophiliac note of the Suite de Merlin and the Prophesies is replaced by an explorer’s curiosity. Merlin goes ‘undir that stone to latte hir wete [know] of the mervayles there, but she wrought so there for hym that he come nevere oute for all the craufte he coude do’.90 Malory foregoes the opportunity to draw larger morals about the cunning of women; Nenyve simply leaves Merlin under the stone and goes away. Malory’s abbreviation of his source results in a confusing multiplication of his Ladies and Damsels of the Lake.91 First he identifies a maiden who brings Excalibur to Arthur and Merlin as the Lady of the Lake. Subsequently this lady, explicitly recognized by Arthur as the girl who had given him the sword, is beheaded by Balin.92 The damoiselle cacheresse, Nenyve, takes over the Lady’s title after she has acquired a magical education from Merlin.93 Since she has no particular connection with Lancelot and his cousins, Malory does not endow her with the lake manor. In the Suite, Excalibur is fetched by an unnamed girl who knows the secret of an underwater bridge leading to an invisible magic island in the middle of a lake. Shortly afterwards she is killed by Balin.94 Niviene, the damoiselle cacheresse, emerges as the ‘true’ Lady of the Lake some

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time later. In Malory, Nenyve intervenes in the battle between Arthur and Accolon, rescues Arthur from the clutches of the enchantress Aunowre and clears Guenevere of guilt in the affair of the Poisoned Apple, when she is accused of attempting to poison Gawain, and even appears on the barge with Morgan to take Arthur away.95 As Sue Holbrook and Geraldine Heng suggest, Nenyve recovers the independence she lost when she was abducted from Arthur’s court, becoming a figure who intervenes sporadically in the affairs of the Arthurian world.96 Uniquely, Malory makes the Lady who would not tolerate Merlin’s desire for her into the scourge of a woman who seeks to decide for herself who will be her lover. The Lady persecutes the unfortunate lady Ettard, who refuses to follow the courtly script and reciprocate the love of Sir Pelleas. The tale of Pellias and Arcade as found in the Suite, the source which Malory follows quite closely until this point, is radically altered.97 In the Suite Gawain agrees to intercede with Arcade on Pellias’s behalf, but, for the first time in his life, the text claims, he himself falls in love when he meets Arcade. Pellias finds the two lovers asleep in bed together, but does not kill them, simply leaving his sword as a sign that he has been there. Impressed by Pellias’s magnanimity, Gawain persuades Arcade to take Pellias as her lord. In the Morte Darthur Gawain shows no such scruples and, after being seduced by Ettard, leaves Pelleas to his own devices. The Lady intervenes, summarily employing love-magic to make Ettard fall in love with the knight whom she had previously scorned: ‘therewith she threw such an inchauntemente uppon hir that she loved hym so sore that well-nyghe she was nere oute of hir mynde’. This outcome, the Lady peremptorily claims, is the ‘ryghteuouse jugemente of God’.98 Awakening from an enchanted sleep, Pelleas finds he no longer cares for Ettard and falls in love with the Lady. While Ettard dies of a broken heart, the Lady and Pelleas remain faithful to each other for the duration of Arthur’s rule. Nenyve is co-opted, by God, or so she claims, to police women’s obedience to the rules of fin’amors, without which the chivalric system would come under threat. If a knight is not rewarded for his prowess by gaining acceptance from his lady, his unstinting pursuit of honour becomes less attractive. Ettard has no right not to grant her love to Pelleas, since he is brave and loves her faithfully, especially once Malory has removed the Suite’s mitigating circumstance: that Pelleas is of low birth.99 In Kennedy’s terms, ‘the theme of love inspired by prowess and prowess inspired by love’ is vital to the chivalric system. Nenyve denies to other women the freedom to refuse to love the one who

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loves them, a freedom which, as her dealings with Merlin show, she was able to maintain in her own affairs only through her knowledge of enchantment.

The Lady of the Lake and Lancelot Lancelot’s foster-mother (‘a fairy who raised him in his childhood’) is first mentioned in Chrétien’s Chevalier de la Charrete (The Knight of the Cart). Chrétien evokes Lancelot’s unusual childhood only in order to explain the magic ring the knight possesses.100 In Lanzelet (a later text, but likely relying on earlier traditions, which the Lancelot adapted), a sea fairy raises the boy in her realm of Meideland. Here there are no men: Lanzelet learns courtly skills from the ladies. Mermen are imported to train him in arms, but they neglect – understandably – to teach him how to ride.101 When the young man sets out into the world, the sea fairy reveals that he will only learn his name and lineage when he has fulfilled her mission: he must attack the noble Iweret, the enemy of her son, Mabuz. Iweret’s land borders on that of Mabuz, and Iweret’s courage is a reproach to Mabuz’s cowardice. Lanzelet overcomes and kills Iweret, marries his daughter, Yblis, and eventually becomes king over Iweret’s land. The foster-mother keeps her word to Lanzelet: he learns his name, parentage and the fact that Arthur is his uncle.102 She gives Yblis a fine magical tent, and also sends an enchanted mantle to Arthur’s court as a chastity test. Yblis is the only lady whom it will fit, so Lanzelet’s standing is boosted by his wife’s virtue. Lanzelet’s abductor has, in part, saved his life by rescuing him, but she has her own covert agenda: to promote her unworthy son at the expense of an exemplary knight. It is solely to this end that she rears and trains Lanzelet as the best knight in the world. Like other heroes induced by Other World beings to fight against their enemies, Lanzelet gains an outstanding lady as his reward.103 The sea fairy’s intention in sending the chastity mantle to the Arthurian court is tactless rather than malicious: the mantle celebrates Yblis’s virtue, while the failure of the other ladies, as in other chastity tests, is discounted by the embarrassed menfolk out of a sense of solidarity.104 Apart from such conventional courtesies, Lanzelet scarcely maintains a relationship with his mentor; he does not visit her after leaving Meideland, and she does not attend his wedding. The Non-Cyclical and Vulgate Lancelot give the fullest accounts of the Lady’s abduction of the infant Lancelot, narrated from the viewpoint of Lancelot’s mother. Leaving baby Lancelot by the lake, the queen goes out of sight to

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lament over her husband’s dead body. Remembering her son, she returns to find a lady kissing Lancelot and pressing him against her breasts. The queen asks the lady to put the child down; Image not available without replying, the lady leaps into the lake with the child.105 Only later does the text relate that the lady is that same Ninianne who learned magic from Merlin; at the time of the abduction the audience has no better idea than Lancelot’s mother of . . Lancelot abducted by the Lady of the Lake what is happening. The Lady is not a supernatural being, as we have seen, yet she assumes a traditional fairy role, abducting an apparently abandoned child who may be in danger.106 The lake is a place where marvellous things may be expected to happen. Described earlier in the Lancelot as Diana’s, its pagan past is partly effaced and partly redefined when Lancelot’s mother builds a convent next to it; the virginity which Diana valued so highly becomes the chastity of the nuns in the new Christian context. The absolute claims of the mother are recognized in the Lancelot, at the same time as they are marginalized. The Lady loved him and cared for him more tenderly ‘than any woman could who had not borne him in her womb’.107 Her fostering is highly successful; she protects him from the machinations of his father’s enemy, Claudas, and rescues his cousins Bors and Lionel from the tyrant by magic.108 The Lancelot provides some well-observed instances of the Lady’s child-rearing practices: she pretends to chastise the ten-year-old Lancelot for beating his tutor who had mistreated him, but inwardly she concludes from his behaviour that he is ready to take responsibility for himself. She cajoles Lionel and Bors into eating properly after their arrival under the lake by suggesting that if they don’t start eating again their tutors will not be sent for to join them.109 The day comes when the Lady realizes, with great grief, that her charge is of an age when he must be allowed to leave the protected environment under the lake. Before he sets off to make his way in the world, she delivers her celebrated lecture on chivalry.110 The Lady provides a long, symbolic account of knighthood, adding that on being dubbed knight, the candidate

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vows to follow the teachings of the man who knights him, ‘who is better able to explain it all than I am’.111 She is careful not to claim exhaustive knowledge of the nature of knighthood, merely to explain its theological basis. Nevertheless she kits Lancelot out in all-white Image not available clothes and equipment, devising for him a stunningly theatrical entrance to Camelot. Urging him to do his best in striving for renown, she surrenders him to the masculine world of honour with assurances of his noble birth.112 The Lady’s subsequent inter. . Guenevere ventions in the Lancelot are limited. with the cleft shield The faithful Saraïde is dispatched to bring three particular shields for Lancelot, which give him extra strength in his first mighty feat, the conquering of the terrifying fortress of Dolorous Garde. As Harf-Lancner points out, Lancelot thus wins renown, not just through valour, but because he is bolstered by supernatural power.113 The Lady’s love for Lancelot inevitably makes her kindly disposed towards Guenevere, to whom she sends a shield split from top to bottom, barely held together by the central boss. The shield, the damsel who brings it delicately suggests, symbolizes the incompletely consummated love between Guenevere and Lancelot. Marvellously, after the couple’s first full sexual encounter the split closes of itself.114 The fissure in Guenevere’s feminine wholeness made by her desire for Lancelot is sealed by their union; the shield becomes emblematic of the couple’s love, capable, when placed around Lancelot’s neck, of ending his madness after he has been kept prisoner at the Saxon Rock. Significantly, when he is restored to rationality, this sign of his attachment distresses him, so that he cries out in torment for it to be removed. The public, if disguised, display of his private love endangers Lancelot’s sanity.115 Only the arrival of the Lady, who calls Lancelot by his childhood name and uses a precious healing salve of the type previously seen as the property of Morgan in Chrétien’s Yvain, can restore Lancelot permanently to sanity. The Lady and Guenevere meet and

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make friends for the first time in this scene; in a speech which parallels her earlier account of knighthood, the Lady advises the queen of the importance of fidelity in love.116 The Lady cures Lancelot once again from madness when, having been imprisoned by Morgan, he is released on condition he keep away from the queen. She prevents him from committing suicide over the tomb of his friend Galehaut by sending a damsel to suggest the relocation of Galehaut’s body to the grave at Dolorous Garde, where Lancelot himself is destined to lie.117 Her protection extends to Arthur’s army; she appears to warn Bors during Arthur’s war against Claudas that Roman reinforcements are close at hand and intend to take Arthur’s men by surprise. The Lady’s intervention here is simply an extension of her support for Lancelot and his cousins; she is working for their ultimate success against their deadly enemy rather than assuming Merlin’s role as counsellor.118 Her gender and restricted freedom of movement – she does not have Merlin’s apparent ability to translocate, but is always encumbered with the retinue that befits a great medieval lady – prevent her from exercising Merlin’s watchfulness over the affairs of the kingdom. Her protection operates remotely, not only through her numerous damsels who go through the Arthurian world on the Lady’s business, but also by proxy through the magic rings she provides. In the Lancelot the Lady eventually marries her lover; he is independently endowed with a castle by Bors during the war of Gaul.119 Harf-Lancner connects the Lady’s love relationship to her rationalization from a true Other World figure with ulterior motives – whether erotic or political – into a human female with unusual powers: ‘the marriage contributes to the socialization of the fairy; the Lady of the Lake bends to the laws of human society’.120 The text distances the Lady’s behaviour from that of Morgan in Ogier le Danois, where Morgan is Ogier’s godmother but still has amorous intentions towards her protégé, and from the sea fairy of the Lanzelet. The existence of the lover deflects any suspicions about the Lady’s interest in Lancelot; she herself assures Guenevere that her feelings are solely maternal, though she mentions the jealousy of her lover towards the youth. The opposition between the lechery of Morgan and the virginity of the Lady can only be sustained in the short term. Inevitably, if she is to act in the courtly world, the Lady must be socialized to the extent of taking a lover; in the Prophesies Méliadus develops into a significant character in his own right. Only in the Suite de Merlin does Niviene succeed in retaining her virginity, but at a cost of removing herself

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from the social world altogether. Malory’s coup in marrying the Lady off to the disillusioned knight Pelleas underlines the difficulty the romance world has with non-religiously motivated virginity. The Lancelot understands being a mother as a matter of nurture, not of nature; the Lady offers the love, support and training that a good mother provides to her sons, to such an extent that the consideration that she did not actually bear Lancelot within her body becomes irrelevant. Lancelot recognizes the Lady quite spontaneously as ‘you who are my lady and my mother’.121 The natural mothers of Lancelot, Bors and Lionel are marginalized, sent off to a convent where their laments for their lost children are soon recast as the stuff of hagiography. Helaine, Lancelot’s mother, becomes an outstandingly pious nun; Evaine, her sister, is less blessed with strength, but her piety earns her a comforting vision of her children in safety so that she can die in peace.122 Helaine’s reward for her devotion to God is to live long enough to be reunited with Lancelot after the overcoming of Claudas, but she dies a week later.123 The enclosure narrative remains substantially the same in its outlines across the five texts considered in this chapter, but the characterization of Merlin and his lover varies widely. This variation is, as we have seen, structurally determined by the larger narrative implications of the role of Lancelot and of his mentor, of Morgan, and by the text’s view of Merlin’s redemption. The Merlin of the Estoire and the Suite is identical with Robert de Boron’s Merlin, whose speedy baptism by his mother and her confessor, Blaise, redeems him from the genetic inheritance of his demonic father. That Merlin is saved makes an important point about the effectiveness of baptism; even a devil’s child can be washed clean of original sin. This Merlin cannot therefore be as diabolical as the unredeemed Merlin of the Lancelot; in the Estoire he is indeed lovable, and in the Suite he is a patient suitor. In keeping the Lady and Merlin’s lover separate, the clerical author of the Estoire creates a fantasy of emotional and sexual gratification for his intellectual counterpart. The sage withdraws into a still courtly, yet intimate sphere with his lady, a place whose dominant values are prized more by a secular clerical author, perhaps, than by the men in his chivalric audience. In the Suite, the damoiselle cacheresse retains an essential link with the forest and the wild; refusing courtly values, she becomes exploitative and cruel. The cost to her is exclusion from the chivalric world; her intervention to save Arthur from Accolon is achieved before the loss of Merlin becomes public, and she does not return to Camelot afterwards. She is somewhat rehabilitated by Malory, who brings her in to counter disruptive

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female behaviour: Ettard’s refusal to cooperate in the rules of fin’amors, the enchantress Aunowre’s kidnapping of Arthur, and Guenevere’s unjustified peril in the affair of the Poisoned Apple.124 In the Prophesies the Lady is a benevolent opponent to the partly comic trio of enchantresses headed by Morgan, whom we met in Chapter . Though she is cruel to Merlin, she regrets her treatment of him, especially when she finds her former and current lovers construing her behaviour in misogynist terms. In this text Merlin is a troubling figure, both support and threat to the Arthurian realm. His profligacy with his magical knowledge counterbalances the warnings and prophecies he provides for the king and for his audience. The Lady’s actions solve the Merlin problem; his mortal flesh with its carnal urges is destroyed, and the journey of the four enchantresses to find him fails.125 His spirit, with its important prophetic and political insights, survives, mediated initially by Méliadus, a chivalric rather than clerkly figure, who doubles the Merlin of the Estoire by renouncing the court for a retreat into heterosexual pleasure and emotional intimacy. The Lady herself is marginal to this strand of the Prophesies; she is merely a reluctant facilitator of Méliadus’s encounter with Merlin. Elsewhere in the text, she still fulfils the important quasi-maternal role set up in the Lancelot with respect to Lancelot and his cousins, as well as countering the destructive activities of Morgan and her cohort. The enclosure story addresses other themes beyond the contrasting attractions of public and private spheres addressed in the Estoire and the Prophesies. That magic is a means to female independence is underlined in the other texts. Merlin’s lover gets what she wants through her magical knowledge, enjoying or refusing sexual relations on her own terms, looking after her surrogate sons, and, at least in the Lancelot and the Prophesies, she intervenes in the chivalric world with an effectiveness which Morgan, isolated in her forest castles, forfeits. None of the enchantresses we have met in this chapter, with the exception of that minor damsel who is beheaded by Balin in Malory, is killed in the course of Arthurian narrative. Survivors all, they are protected by the power of their magic from the fate that overtakes independent women who cannot make use of enchantment to work their will. In the next chapter we will meet Morgan’s blood-sister, the Queen of Orkney, whose story exemplifies the risks run by the woman who lives in the courtly world and who seeks, like her enchantress doubles, to please herself.

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   King Lot, the mother of Gawain and Mordred, [is] the most tragic figure of a woman in Arthurian story’, suggests Edmund Gardner.1 ‘O, thou fayre quene of Orkeney, kynge Lottys wyff and modir unto sir Gawayne and to sir Gaherys, and modir to many other, for thy love I am in grete paynys!’ laments the queen’s lover, the knight Lamerok, in Malory.2 The Queen of Orkney often has no name, and little characterization. What is significant about this lady, as these two quotations make clear, is her family and social status: even her lover invokes her more in terms of her powerful, vengeful male kindred than as a great beauty or outstanding example of courtliness.3 The queen is herself of the highest lineage: sister or half-sister of Arthur, she is sometimes daughter of Uther, elsewhere daughter of the Duke of Cornwall. The episodes in which she figures in Arthurian story usually feature one or more of her relatives, whom she seeks to influence, most successfully when she deploys her maternal status and authority. When her kin group turn against her because she dares to ignore the obligations of blood feud in choosing her lover, the queen is destroyed. Lacking, in medieval texts if not in modern ones, the magical skills of her sister, the queen is murdered because she transgresses against the male honour code.4

Gawain’s Mother Gawain’s mother is named Anna in some early texts, most consistently those which depend on Geoffrey’s chronicle tradition. In Geoffrey’s Historia Regum

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Britanniae she appears only briefly and her behaviour is irreproachable. Uther’s daughter, she is married to Lot and is mother of Gawain and Mordred by her husband.5 However in twelfth- and early-thirteenth-century accounts of Gawain’s childhood, De Ortu Waluuanii (–), Perlesvaus (c. ) and the fragmentary Les Enfances Gauvain (early thirteenth century), Gawain’s mother is guilty of premarital sexual transgression. Gawain is born illegitimate and his mother abandons or gives him away to hide her shame; his uncertain status is later rectified by the marriage of his parents.6 Gawain’s father is always Lot, but his status varies considerably in the three accounts. In De Ortu, Lot is the son of King Sichelm of Norway, and a hostage of Uther. Anna, Uther’s daughter, yields to her desire for the handsome youth; when born, the child is given to merchants to be reared secretly and furnished with a set of recognition tokens. By happy chance, when Gawain finally makes his way to Arthur’s court, having been fostered and educated by the pope and having achieved much fame in the Mediterranean, his father and mother, now King and Queen of Norway, are present. The parents confess their past behaviour and a joyful recognition scene ensues.7 When his kin ties are discovered, Gawain’s birth is no longer a cause of shame; the text notes that the revelation is made, ‘not for any disgrace, but for the greatest honour’.8 In Perlesvaus it is not until late in the story that the truth of Gawain’s early years is revealed to him. His mother, unnamed in this text, bore him to Lot, who was already a king, apparently before they were married. She then gave the child to the lord of a certain castle to expose. The lord had Gawain baptized with his own name, provided the infant with sealed letters declaring his royal descent on both sides, and had him raised by a worthy man of lower status, who eventually took the baby to Rome. Here the pope opened the letters, adopted the child into his own family, and eventually the young man was chosen to be emperor of Rome. Some elements of the story of his birth were revealed at this point; reproached for his illegitimacy, Gawain left Rome to make his career in Arthur’s kingdom. Gawain’s birth tale is narrated to him and Arthur by a priest when the king and knight chance upon the ruined castle of Gawain’s foster-father. Here, as in the Mort Artu, revelation is occasioned by a series of wall paintings in the castle’s chapel, ‘richly painted in gold and blue’, which recount Gawain’s early life.9 It is not clear how much of the tale is new to Gawain, but it is certainly a surprise to Arthur. Gawain is ashamed at the revelation of his irregular birth, but Arthur draws the parallel between Gawain’s conception and Arthur’s own. Embarrassed by his failure to

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recognize the subject of his story, the priest is quick to reassure Gawain that since his mother and Lot married and the child received Christian baptism, all religious or legal stigma is removed. The already powerful bond between uncle and nephew is further strengthened by this shared experience of shame and reassurance. Gawain’s youthful experiences are long in the past in Perlesvaus; thus there is no joyful reunion scene with his parents. Gawain’s kinship with Arthur is asserted at his first appearance in the text, and it is clear there is no mystery about his lineage, only about the circumstances of his childhood separation from his family.10 In the Enfances, Gawain is the son of Morcades, a name probably produced from a blend of the Mor- prefix associated with Morgan and Mordred, and the Latin Orcades, meaning ‘Orkney’, the kingdom most usually associated with Gawain’s lineage.11 Here Lot is a mere squire. To avoid scandal, the child is entrusted to another knight called Gawain. Gawain baptises the boy with his own name, then casts him adrift on the sea in a cask. Later the boy is rescued by a fisherman, his history is discovered from a letter found in the cask, and the boy is taken to Rome where he is educated by the pope. At this point the fragment ends.12 The stories of Gawain’s childhood are based on the story of Pope Gregory the Great. Gregory was said to be the product of an incestuous birth and to have been set adrift in just such a dangerous vessel; recollection of the Gregory story may explain why Gawain is reared at the papal court.13 Absent from all these accounts is any sense of Anna/Morcades’ apprehension of her own position, her feelings on learning of her pregnancy and when deciding to abandon her child. In De Ortu Anna’s joy at the reunion with her grown son is marked, though, no doubt because of the elements of shame involved in the revelation of the truth, the scene does not equal the extremes of rejoicing in Malory’s ‘Tale of Sir Gareth’ (see below), where marriage as well as family reunion is at stake, and in which Morgause’s unblemished maternal aspect is greatly to the fore. In these three narratives the Queen of Orkney’s role is entirely incidental to Gawain’s triumph over infant hardship and danger.

The Queen and Power Politics The Queen of Orkney remains without a name in the Vulgate Cycle, though she makes a number of appearances there. In the Estoire Merlin her most substantial role is a political one, demanding that her sons abandon their loyalty to their father, who opposes Arthur at the time of his rise to power, and attach

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themselves to the newcomer instead. Near the time of Mordred’s birth (the chronology is not clear on this point), the queen rounds on her eldest son Gawain, who has just come in from hunting, and rebukes him for wasting his time: ‘all you do every day is play around with these greyhounds!’14 In a telling endorsement of Arthur’s worth and right to the throne, she urges Gawain and his brothers to ask Arthur to knight them and then work to bring about a reconciliation between Arthur and Lot, their father. Lot and his allies are intransigent in their opposition to Arthur’s claim to the throne, notwithstanding the need for national unity to thwart a Saxon invasion. The revelation that Arthur is his uncle is enough to convince Gawain, with his brother Agravain’s support, to defect to Arthur, uniting with his cousin Galescalain to defeat a contingent of Saxons. Very much later all four brothers and their cousins, Galescalain and Yvain, are knighted by Arthur in a scene of great rejoicing.15 The queen appeals to Gawain’s latent desire for honour, urging a fundamental breach between father and son which results in a reversal of normal expectations of paternal authority and filial obedience. The anomalous elements in the situation are made explicit when Gawain is finally forced to attack his father in open battle in order to bring about his submission to Arthur.16 That the queen’s primary loyalty should lie with her brother rather than with her husband is not surprising; as Rosemary Morris notes, ‘wives at a foreign court must often have sympathized with their families when the two realms were in conflict’.17 Since the Queen of Orkney had not shared Arthur’s upbringing in the Vulgate context, her enthusiasm for her unknown half-brother needs additional support. Hence the author juxtaposes her persuasion of Gawain to the seduction scene discussed below, a development which implies that the queen’s loyalty to Arthur is as much erotic as it is political. The queen’s other sisters, Blasine, wife of King Neutres and mother of Galescalain, and Brimesent, wife of Uriens and mother of Yvain, also encourage their sons to defect to Arthur in parallel scenes. Galescalain’s mother vouches for the truth of Arthur’s parentage and asserts that the sword in the stone guarantees her brother’s right to the throne. Neutres is so angry that he does not speak to his wife for a month. Yvain decides to join Arthur out of solidarity with his cousins, but also because his father Uriens appears to favour his own nephew, Bademagu, over his son.18 The sisters’ loyalty to their halfbrother, their recognition of his claims and their readiness to conspire with their sons against their husbands’ allegiances are not only an important political development in Arthur’s struggle to keep the throne, but also reflect that

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primacy of sibling loyalty discussed in Chapter . Uriens’s relationship with Bademagu highlights the continuing importance of the sister’s-son relationship in the Vulgate: the cousins are impelled to Arthur’s side in part because their mothers reveal that they are Arthur’s nephews, the very relation which Uriens appears to have privileged over that with his own son.19 The Estoire’s multiplication of Arthurian sisters underscores the fact that Arthur’s political support is rooted in his maternal kindred; the cousins, and eventually their fathers, make possible both the rout of the Saxons and Arthur’s securing the throne. The Queen of Orkney features, and, significantly, is permitted to speak, once more in the Estoire when Gawain rescues his mother from King Thaurus and his Saxons, who have seized her and her baby as their prisoners.20 A squire recovers the infant Mordred, still in his cradle, while Gawain arrives on the scene to see his mother being dragged by the hair by two Saxons on horseback. The queen is praying loudly to the Virgin to help her, but every time she calls out, Thaurus brutally slaps her across the face with his iron glove. The queen is knocked senseless; but, recovering consciousness, she swears that she will never submit to Thaurus. It is not until her blood is flowing freely and she can no longer stand that Gawain intervenes. Calling Thaurus ‘the son of a Saxon whore’, Gawain attacks and cuts off Thaurus’s head. Plate  shows the swooning queen with the Saxons fleeing left, while Gawain’s horse tramples the body of the fallen king. The queen revives in Gawain’s arms; in true maternal fashion her first thought is to reassure him that she will not die of her wounds, though she is badly hurt. Reunited with Mordred, she soon recovers her health, and, with her assent, her sons resolve to prevent her return to Lot until he has made his peace with Arthur. Gawain eventually overcomes Lot in one-to-one combat, despite the conflicting loyalties he feels, torn between his father on one side, and his uncle, the lord who knighted him, on the other. Lot is vocal in his disapproval of Gawain’s unfilial behaviour, but Gawain brings him to swear allegiance to Arthur, and, the Estoire claims, ‘from that time forth they were good friends for the rest of their lives’.21 The Saxons’ mistreatment of the queen strikingly draws on the conventions of saints’ lives, in particular the passion of St Juliana. Gawain initially freezes in horror at the sight of his mother’s torments. His immobility gives space for their elaboration: she is dragged by the hair, slapped and beaten while her blood flows. Yet, in a triumphant reversal of the usual patterns of martyrdom,

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it is the heathen ruler and not the suffering Christian woman whose head is cut off. The queen loudly invokes the Virgin for help in her torment and swears that she will never give her faith – meaning, primarily, her sexual loyalty – to Thaurus. Her language strongly suggests that the opposition between Christianity and heathendom is also at stake, an opposition which the Lancelot–Grail translation underlines when Gawain reviles the Saxon king as a ‘thieving heathen’.22 The Virgin answers the queen’s prayers by sending her son to rescue her. Just as the Virgin held her dead Son under the cross, so Gawain gently cradles his injured mother, bathing her face. A similar, if condensed, scene takes place as prelude to the final rout of the Saxons, in the Estoire: Blasine, Galescalain’s mother, is kidnapped by Saxons who treat her quite kindly in comparison to Thaurus’s torment of her sister. She too is rescued by Gawain and returned to her husband.23 Neutres and Uriens, Arthur’s remaining, recalcitrant brothers-in-law, are still only temporarily reconciled with him, but the rescue of Neutres’ queen compels their loyalty and they agree to fight with Arthur against the Saxons, supporting him both against the invading King Rions and on his next campaign in response to the Roman demand for tribute. The exchanges of women between son and father, nephew and uncle, seal the political relationships which are crucial to Arthur’s success, but it is Gawain, rather than Arthur, who finesses his power over his mother and aunt into political capital. Gawain’s role in the Estoire de Merlin emphasizes the overthrow of old patterns of loyalty. A new generation is coming to power, and Gawain, rather older than he is in the Post-Vulgate Suite, is able to parlay his way into the circle of Arthur’s most trusted knights through the sister’s son blood tie.

The Conception of Mordred There are three versions of the story of Mordred’s conception: in the Estoire Merlin, in the Post-Vulgate Suite de Merlin and in Malory’s Morte Darthur. This last is dependent on, but by no means identical to, the Suite’s version. In each successive version, the liaison between Arthur and his sister becomes more blameworthy, the Queen of Orkney shoulders more – or at least more equal amounts – of responsibility for the affair, and the catastrophic consequences of Mordred’s existence are prophesied by Merlin with increased vehemence. Chronologically it seems most likely that the section of the Lancelot in which a hermit reveals to Mordred his terrible destiny and drops riddling hints about

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his parentage was composed first; the Estoire-version of the conception was subsequently invented to explain and support the wise man’s prophecy.24 In the Lancelot scene the hermit declares that Mordred will cause the downfall of the Round Table; that ‘the worthiest man I know, who is your father, will be killed. And you will die by his hand, and so the father will die by the son Image not available and the son by the father’, reinforcing his prophecy by referring to a painting in a church at Camelot which Arthur had commissioned to commemorate a baleful dream he had had. Infuriated by this shameful intelligence, Mordred swiftly kills the hermit, preventing him . . Arthur and from communicating a similarly dark Morgause in bed prophecy to Lancelot. Lancelot spies a letter in the dead man’s hand and secretly takes it. Reading it later, he learns that Arthur is Mordred’s father and the Queen of Orkney his mother, though the circumstances of the conception are not elaborated there.25 By the time Mordred’s moves to usurp the throne and marry Guenevere have become patent in the Mort Artu, it is clear that Guenevere already knows Mordred’s parentage and its incestuous implications if she were to marry him as the barons urge.26 Nowhere in the Lancelot or the Mort is there discussion of the incestuous aspect of Mordred’s conception, and there is little interest in the fact that his mother is Arthur’s half-sister; that his maternal descent guarantees his relationship to Gawain is more crucial. When Lancelot realizes that Mordred will be the death of Arthur, he reflects that he would happily have killed Mordred if he could find some pretext, ‘but he refrained from doing so because of his love for Sir Gawain’.27 The Vulgate Estoire de Merlin gives a brief account of Mordred’s conception in terms of the kind of ‘bed-trick’ by which Galahad is conceived in the Lancelot, perhaps originating, as Rosemary Morris suggests, in the circumstances of Arthur’s own conception, when Uther slept with Ygraine in the guise of her husband.28 The Estoire de Merlin takes its cue from the brief explanation offered

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in the Estoire de Saint Graal, where the narrator notes that Mordred was not, as people thought, the son of Lot, but had been conceived when the unmarried Arthur had accidentally lain with his sister, thinking her to be ‘the fair maid of Ireland’, and that both brother and sister were extremely penitent when they realized what they had done.29 The Estoire de Merlin thus, as Miranda Griffin comments, ‘is a text with a lot of explaining to do’.30 The tale of Mordred’s conception is related after the event; the account is juxtaposed with the queen’s powerful rhetorical plea to Gawain to ally himself with his uncle; as noted above, her pregnancy motivates both the vehemence of her attack on her son and the sudden depth of feeling for her brother. The text explains that when Arthur was still a squire, he and his foster-family were present when the barons and sub-kings gathered to choose a new king after the death of Uther. Lot was accompanied by his wife. The young Arthur fell in love with her, although the virtuous queen took no notice of the squire’s passion. One night, Lot went to a midnight conference with his barons, creeping out of bed without waking his wife. Arthur, sleeping near the door to the king’s bedchamber, seized the opportunity to slip into the queen’s bed and made love to her, the queen believing him to be her husband. The next day, when carving before her at dinner, Arthur swore the queen to secrecy before revealing his actions of the night before. The queen was ashamed, but, the text relates, she came to love him when she realized his descent and his worth, and thus she acts on his behalf in securing the loyalty of her older sons.31 The Estoire pointedly notes that this was the only time that Arthur and his sister lay together. The incest is unwitting on either side; Arthur’s behaviour is cast as the understandable attraction of a young squire to a mature and gracious lady, a youthful folly which pays off for him in terms of securing his sister’s covert political support. The queen’s innocence is stressed in this account, as the text gives us access to her interior thoughts. She tactfully ignores signs of the young Arthur’s feelings because of her regard for her husband, makes love with him in the belief that he is her spouse – that ‘she truly thought that he was her husband’ is repeated twice. Her friendly, even embarrassed, response, much like Dorigen in Chaucer’s Franklin’s Tale, to the young man kneeling before her the next day to carve triggers Arthur’s confession, cleverly phrased in terms of a boon; the queen promises not to betray him before she knows what is at stake. She cannot publicly manifest anger with Arthur; she responds rather with shame, for she has been made

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to break her marriage vows. But the effect of her pregnancy and the news of Arthur’s claim to the throne is to spark a profound love for her brother, an affection which, whatever its erotic roots, is quickly assimilated to loyal sisterly love. The Vulgate Cycle makes no direct reference to the intercourse between Arthur and his sister as incestuous. Merlin makes no prophecies about the consequences of Arthur’s desire, merely informing his protégé that one of Lot’s sons is actually his. Nor does the Estoire recount the portentous dream to which the hermit alludes later in the Lancelot. Arthur seems guilty of little more than a youthful error of judgement and is given no reason to try to eliminate Mordred during the boy’s childhood. Rosemary Morris points out the missed opportunity for ‘Jocastan horror’ here; since the queen’s conversation with Gawain follows on Blasine’s revelation of their kinship to Galescalain, the aftermath of the encounter is ‘robbed of all meaning by its assimilation to the stereotyped reactions of her sisters’.32 The Post-Vulgate Suite de Merlin gives a very different and altogether more coherent account of Mordred’s conception and birth and their consequences, though it is notably reticent in its treatment of the queen’s feelings.33 The narrative is prominently placed at the beginning of the Suite, following on the coronation of Arthur. The Queen of Orkney comes on a formal visit to court, accompanied by her four sons; Gawain the eldest is only ten. Both she and Arthur are ignorant of their kinship; Arthur falls in passionately in love with her, and before the two-month visit is over they sleep together. The narrator immediately makes known the consequences of this casual adultery: ‘Thus the brother knew his sister carnally, and the lady carried the one who later betrayed and killed his father and put the land to torture and destruction.’34 Just after the queen returns to Orkney, Arthur has the first of the text’s ‘adventures’, the terrifying dream alluded to in the Lancelot. This nightmare, followed swiftly by Arthur’s encounter with the monstrous Questing Beast, inaugurates one of the major thematic strands of the tale; as Martha Asher notes, Arthur’s realm is now defined as ‘the Adventurous Kingdom’ where, chiefly in consequence of the Grail’s presence within its borders, strange adventures occur, testing not only the quality of the individual knight, but the very institution of worldly chivalry.35 The Beast is itself a consequence of incestuous sibling desire. Although its origins are not revealed until much later in the cycle, the irruption of dream and monster into Arthur’s settled realm underline the disruptive consequences of Arthur’s incest.36

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Not only does the king plunge irremediably into sin on account of his lust, he compounds his crime by attempting to kill the infant Mordred, in a classic incest-and-exposure narrative. When Merlin reveals the truth of Image not available Arthur’s parentage and the incestuous nature of the connection with the queen, prophesying that harm will come to the kingdom from the child, Arthur decides that it would be best to kill Mordred at birth. Merlin argues . . Arthur sets vigorously against this course, vindithe newborns adrift cating prophecy as a narrative device by raising and refuting the idea of predestination. Mordred is innocent until he commits a crime; any pre-emptive action against the child on Merlin’s part would result in him losing his soul – the soul which he owes only to the promptness of his mother and her confessor Blaise in baptising him at birth and saving him from the influence of his diabolic sire.37 Nor can Arthur circumvent Fate, Merlin warns.38 Nevertheless Arthur puts in motion a plan to take possession of all babies born on May Day and keep them prisoner until he can decide what to do with them. The ship on which Mordred is dispatched from Orkney founders and his cradle washes ashore. He is fostered by Nabur, gaining the notable knight Sagremor as his foster-brother. Warned by Christ in a dream to do no harm to the children, Arthur accepts Jesus’ challenge to entrust them to the Saviour’s mercy and sets them adrift in a boat. The children are rescued by King Orians and raised in the Castle of Boys. The barons of Logres are justifiably angry when they realize that their children have been set adrift, and it is only on Merlin’s double assurance that the king acted to save the kingdom, and that the children have come to no harm that reconciliation is achieved.39 The queen’s motivations remain mysterious in the Post-Vulgate. Arthur understandably arouses her enmity when Mordred is lost, and, in contrast to her tireless efforts to bring about reconciliation in the Estoire, she supports Lot’s subsequent rebellion. Malory reworks the story to give the queen, whom he names Morgause, a rather more active role than in the preceding versions.40 Ostensibly she comes to court bearing a message from Lot, but in fact she is

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on a spying mission. The deception underlying her arrival at Camelot suggestively points up both her adulterous behaviour, since she willingly deceives her husband, and the treachery of the child that results from it. Morgause certainly exercises more agency in this account: Dorsey Armstrong highlights Malory’s addition to his Post-Vulgate source: that Arthur and Morgause ‘were agreed’ to commit adultery.41 Armstrong identifies Morgause as resisting ‘the exchange of women’, a theme associated with her both at her marriage in Malory, and, as shown above, in the Estoire when Gawain and his brothers withhold their mother from their father until he makes peace with Arthur. By choosing to sleep with Arthur, Morgause acts in accordance with her own desires for once, but Armstrong’s argument that the Arthurian kingdom is more threatened by Morgause’s brief affair with her brother than by Guenevere’s lengthy liaison with Lancelot is unwarranted. The question of Morgause’s adultery is considered further below. After Morgause returns home, Arthur has an ominous dream. Merlin mentions almost casually that the child begotten on the sister ‘shall destroy you and all the knyghtes of youre realme’. Arthur takes steps to try to thwart Merlin’s prophecy by ordering that all the male children born on or around May Day should be cast adrift in a boat.42 Most of the children are killed when a storm drives the ship on to rocks, but Mordred survives and is fostered until the age of , when he comes to court.43 To be responsible for a Massacre of the Innocents in this way is a highly inauspicious start to Arthur’s reign.44 Far from effecting a reconciliation between the king and the barons – much harder to bring about than in the Suite de Merlin, since no assurances about the children’s safety can be given – Merlin finds himself taking the blame. Arthur’s callousness, as Peter Field notes, is against type for the king’s characterization in the Morte Darthur; Mordred’s existence is already producing disorder and evil in the kingdom.45 The sin of Arthur and Morgause in both the Suite and in Malory is chiefly a consequence of their ignorance about their blood relationship; the slowness of Ygraine to come forward and claim Arthur as her son is the focus of an important recognition scene in both texts, where Ygraine reveals that she had never known what had become of the baby Merlin had taken away.46 As Elizabeth Archibald shows, the casual liaison of the Merlin has been modified in the later texts in the direction of current incest stories, such as the Gregory and Judas tales. Merlin prophesies that the boy will kill his foster-brother, a motif which occurs in the Judas story, and in a modified form in the Gregory

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story. Mordred does indeed kill his foster-brother Sagremor during the last battle. It is his last act before Arthur runs him through with his lance and he himself fatally wounds his father; the Post-Vulgate Mort implies that, having already knocked Mordred unconscious, Arthur might not have killed his son, had he not revived to commit this outrage on his foster-brother.47 Critical interest in the incest narrative has focused primarily on its consequences for Arthur; Archibald discusses at length the possible implications of attaching an incest story to Arthur, perhaps modelled on the incest motif grafted on to Charlemagne.48 Morris draws attention to the Post-Vulgate author’s interest in predestination and the assumption that Mordred is not necessarily wicked, even if he is born of incest.49 Bogdanow argues that the incest is an important theme of the Post-Vulgate Cycle, employed ‘to heighten the horror of the final tragedy’; indeed right sibling relations are a recurrent motif throughout that text.50 Nevertheless, Morris and Archibald are right to suggest that, though prominent at the beginning of the Post-Vulgate Cycle, the incest is not a particular focus in the downfall of the kingdom. Archibald’s conclusions highlight the divergence of the Post-Vulgate and Malorian versions from the classic incest models, arguing that, unlike these putative predecessors, ‘Mordred’s story is not about a son’s emotional relationship with his mother, but rather about his political relationship with his father’.51 The Mort Artu, Post-Vulgate Mort and, especially, Malory, who has no truck with revelatory hermits or wall paintings, all ignore the implications of incest in their treatment of Arthur and Mordred’s mutual destruction in the final battle; it is the double parricide–filicide and the sense of personal and political betrayal that engage the emotions. Mordred’s mother, as Archibald notes, plays a remarkably small part in the story. The incest may have been unwitting, but both Arthur and, in the two later versions, the Queen of Orkney, were quite aware they were committing adultery, as David Scott Wilson-Okamura and, most recently, Dorsey Armstrong have pointed out.52 Both Morris and Victoria Guerin suggest that adultery, as it were, runs in Arthur’s blood, thanks to the circumstances of his conception.53 Where in the Post-Vulgate it is the loss of Mordred which earns Arthur the renewed enmity of both Lot and his sister, in Malory it is Lot’s realization that he has been cuckolded and that Mordred is not his son which is the cause of his renewed rebellion.54 Against the political capital that Arthur’s seduction of his sister provides in the Estoire, his affair in the Post-Vulgate and Malory has serious short-term as well as long-term consequences. The complications

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of bringing Lot to accept Arthur as rightful king are an important focus of the Estoire, and, as seen above, once that reconciliation is concluded in that text, Lot and Arthur remain friends until Lot’s death, an event not recorded in detail in the Vulgate. In the Suite and in Malory, Lot’s second rebellion, in which he allies himself with Rions, has far-reaching consequences. His death at the hands of Arthur’s ally Pellinor, a killing which motivates the blood feud between Lot’s sons and Pellinor’s, is ultimately a major factor in his queen’s death.55 Armstrong foregrounds the theme of adultery, drawing a contrast between the virtuous Ygraine – who resists adultery, is duped into sleeping with Uther and whose reward is the hero, Arthur, as child – and the sinful Morgause – who agrees to adultery, sleeps with her brother and who gives birth to the anti-hero Mordred. The contrast is clear in Malory, and to some extent in the Suite, but the Estoire’s version of the conception shows the queen behaving much like Ygraine in her innocence of intention. Despite these considerations, as Maureen Fries comments, it is clear to Merlin that incest is the crime that engenders the monstrous child destined to bring down the kingdom; the adultery is a side issue.56 It is not necessary to privilege incest over adultery, or vice versa, in our understanding of the outcome of the queen and Arthur’s sexual relationship; in both the Folie Lancelot and the Tristan en Prose, as Fanni Bogdanow observes, the feud between the sons of Lot and of Pellinor, a consequence of Lot’s renewed rebellion, is inextricably linked to the fate of the individual members of both lineages, and to the final catastrophe of the Arthurian kingdom.57 The queen’s culpability in the conception of Mordred varies according to the roles she is required to play elsewhere in the individual texts. In the Estoire her innocence of the intention to commit adultery, her loyalty to her brother when she realizes the relationship, and her adherence to kinship norms in urging her sons to join forces with her brother, rather than their father, are consistent with her role as suffering Christian queen and as willing negotiating tool between Lot and his offspring. Once the realm is secure and Arthur has successfully repelled Saxons and Romans, the King and Queen of Orkney fade out of the Vulgate narrative, leaving the field clear for the exploits of Lancelot and a younger generation of knights. In the Post-Vulgate Cycle the queen’s motives are opaque; after Lot’s funeral, where the young Gawain swears an oath to avenge his father on Pellinor and his sons, she has nothing to do until she begins her affair with Lamerok, discussed below. Her shadowy role here recalls her transgressive sexuality in the earlier Gawain texts; her affair with

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her brother links her to the numerous sisters across the Post-Vulgate Cycle who find themselves in problematic relationships with their brothers. As suggested above, the juxtaposition of the incestuous affair and Arthur’s encounter with the Questing Beast opens up themes of unnaturalness and monstrosity which find their fulfilment much later when the Beast’s origins in incest are finally revealed.58 Similarly, the curious connection of Pellinor and his sons with the Questing Beast, whom they are fated to pursue, points up the interwoven strands of illicit sexuality and honour-driven violence which will culminate in Gaheris’s unnatural and semi-sexualized crime of matricide. When, in the Suite, Gawain becomes Arthur’s liegeman on the day of the latter’s wedding with Guenevere, his first thought is to accomplish revenge against Pellinor; significantly he recruits Gaheris to his discussion of obligation and tactics. In the Orkney lineage the blood feud will not go away.

The Mother of Gareth After Lot’s funeral, Morgause remains in Orkney while her sons take an honoured place at Arthur’s court. Uniquely, Malory recounts the arrival at court and the subsequent adventures of her youngest son by Lot, Gareth. Gareth serves in the kitchens in disguise for a year before setting out on his first quest, to rescue the lady Lyonesse from a besieging knight. Embroiled in a number of subsequent adventures, Gareth does not return to Camelot, and so Morgause descends magnificently on Arthur’s court, demanding to know what has become of her favourite, ‘my owne dere son that was my joy and blysse’. She is furious with Arthur for failing to honour her son, alleging that in his time in the kitchens, he was demeaningly ‘fedde lyke an hogge’. When all is explained – that Gareth came in disguise, that he had hidden his horse and accoutrements, wanting to be honoured for his own qualities and not as nephew of the king and brother of Gawain – Morgause relents, commenting proudly: ‘ever sytthen he was growyn he was mervaylously wytted’.59 The queen plays an exemplary maternal role here, underlined by the respect with which her other sons treat her, all kneeling to ask for her blessing; Arthur is both apologetic and deferential to his older sister. Gareth is finally located, his identity is revealed and he returns to court where a dramatic and joyful reunion is effected. Both Arthur and Morgause swoon for joy; Arthur weeps ‘as he had bene a chylde’. Uncle and mother bless Gareth’s marriage to Lyonesse and the tale ends with multiple marriages

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of Gareth’s brothers to a sister and cousin of Lyonesse. The family reunion curiously reconstitutes the brother and sister as quasi-parents to Gareth, the lost son. Yet, as Archibald notes, this highly emotional scene represses the recollection of that other lost son, the one who is truly the issue of Arthur and Morgause, and for whom no recognition scene, for good or ill, is ever recorded.60 Arthur’s sister thus loses two sons; in the early tradition it is Gawain whom she abandons and who is restored as an outstanding hero; in the Vulgate and Post-Vulgate Mordred disappears. Yet the queen’s death comes about through a third son, Gaheris, who was never lost, who shadows Gawain in his vengefulness and touchiness where honour is concerned, yet whose reputation for knightliness, throughout the Post-Vulgate Cycle and the Tristan en Prose, is outstanding.

The Queen’s Death The Post-Vulgate Suite de Merlin and the Tristan en Prose and its derivatives regard the Queen of Orkney as a beautiful, desirable woman. Even when Gawain and his brothers are fully grown, ‘she was yet so young and pleasing that her age did not prevent her from loving’.61 Although the widowed queen’s independence is regarded as a positive in Malory when she comes to Camelot to enforce the proper treatment of Gareth, it becomes troubling later in the texts when she decides to exercise sexual choice, taking as lover a member of the lineage which had killed her husband. The Post-Vulgate Cycle, as we have seen, particularly emphasizes the obsession of Gawain and his brother, Gaheris, with King Pellinor, their father’s slayer. When the boy Gawain comes to his father’s funeral he swears to be avenged on the king; the moment he is knighted he and Gaheris discuss how soon Pellinor can be killed.62 When, after Pellinor’s death at Gawain’s hands, Gaheris learns that Pellinor’s son, Lamerok, is having an affair with his mother, that Lamerok has no intention of marrying the lady, and, moreover, is poor, he decides to avenge the shame to him and his brothers. The Folie de Lancelot, a continuation of the Post-Vulgate Suite de Merlin, takes a psychologically insightful view of Gaheris’s situation, noting that Gaheris was most upset by the affair, ‘for he had always loved his mother the queen more than her other children’.63 Gaheris’s revenge is described in close detail. Arriving at his mother’s castle at dawn, he makes straight for her bedroom, where, ‘as mischance and misfortune would have it’, he finds the door open and his mother sleeping in

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bed with Lamerok. Torn between ‘sorrow and anger’, Gaheris faces a single moment of frozen decision as he looks from one lover to the other. In an unusually detailed presentation of interior processes, he observes that Lamerok ‘seemed too handsome and valiant’ to kill; looking at his mother and noting her beauty and nobility, he concludes that no one could blame Lamerok for loving her.64 Yet she, he reasons, deserves ‘to be blamed and humiliated’ for the shame she has brought on her kindred. The narrative keeps the reader in suspense; though earlier a madman had prophesied on the day of Gaheris’s knighting that the death of his mother would be hastened through her son’s sin, in the narrative present the audience knows only that Gaheris intends to ‘avenge this shame without great blame’, not what is going to happen.65 Indeed Gaheris only makes his decision in this split second of calculation: Lamerok he should kill later, because of the shame which killing an unarmed, sleeping knight would entail. His mother, though, can be killed on the spot (Plate ). The queen awakens, sees an armed knight with a drawn sword before her, and, naked, tries to leap out of bed. Gaheris forestalls her by cutting off her head at a single stroke, with such force that her head flies a lance-length from the body. Gaheris reacts swiftly and violently to visual proof of his mother’s sexual nature, sparing himself the potentially shameful sight of his own mother’s nakedness. Lamerok wakes up and, with surprising calmness, he and Gaheris discuss the knightly ethics of the situation. Gaheris orders Lamerok to dress and go away; they will settle their quarrel elsewhere. Lamerok cannot believe that the queen’s own son, with his outstanding reputation for courtesy, could be responsible for such ‘a wrong and treacherous deed’. Reckoning that he can take revenge on Gaheris later, he departs. Gaheris announces his crime to the queen’s attendants: ‘I have done to her … what one should do to a queen who through luckless lust shames her children and all her kinsmen’, and, he generalizes, ‘I think this deed will chastise all noble ladies for the great betrayals they commit.’66 Gaheris’s comments point up the queen’s dual position as mother, and as member of a great lineage; his moralizing remarks about ‘luckless lust’ underline the double standard prevalent in the chivalric view of sexuality. Tellingly, his final rhetorical flourish assimilates his mother’s behaviour to the greatest chivalric crime: betrayal (desloyaulté). The Tristan en Prose gives a broadly similar account of the death of the queen, though it somewhat expands Gaheris’s thoughts. Gaheris is transfixed by Lamerok’s attractiveness; he notes that Lamerok is ‘as handsome and valiant and brave as he had ever seen’, and he is highly conscious of the implications

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of putting such a man to death.67 Lamerok, he thinks, is not to be blamed for his affair, not, as in the Folie, because Gaheris also registers his mother’s beauty, but because he concludes that his mother has not been coerced by the young knight. But what gives the queen pleasure produces dishonour for her children, thinks Gaheris, and so ‘it is clear that she should be punished for it’.68 Though he clearly registers the lassitude of sexual satisfaction in the lovers’ sleep, the son averts his gaze from his mother’s nakedness. While the actual killing matches that in the Folie Lancelot, the Tristan en Prose leaves out the conversation between Lamerok and Gaheris as the former dresses; Lamerok, guessing the identity of the antagonist, leaves silently. In the Folie the queen’s servants, fearing blame themselves, bring her body to Camelot to show Arthur what has occurred. Arthur and her other children mourn her greatly; the king memorializes the name of her killer on her tombstone. Grieving for his mother, Gaheris avoids Camelot, while Gawain, to the alarm of the king and his advisers, swears revenge on his brother. The queen’s life is measured against Gaheris’s worth; now that her death cannot be undone, the knightly consensus is that the tragedy should not be compounded by the loss of Gaheris too. Nevertheless, Gawain and Agravain set out to avenge their mother. Guerrhet sets out to warn his brother, but he finds Gaheris lying ill, so sickened by his own deed that he claims that he is ready to die.69 However, Gaheris recovers, and is riding with Ector, Lancelot’s half-brother, when he is attacked by his other three brothers.70 Ector and Gaheris are having the worse of the unequal struggle when Lamerok chances by and joins in, forcibly bringing about reconciliation between the brothers. Lamerok and Gaheris make peace, Lamerok arguing that God, not Gawain, should take vengeance for Gaheris’s misdeed, and observing rather heartlessly that the death of Gaheris, ‘one of the best knights in the world, and the truest I ever met … would be more to lament than the death of a lady.’71 Arthur subsequently reinforces the reconciliation between the brothers. The Folie emphasizes the enormity and horror of Gaheris’s matricide. ‘How did you have the heart to kill your mother?’ Lamerok demands of him, slipping into a familiar form of address (tu) that is loaded with emotion. The outrage is greatly diminished in the Tristan en Prose and the consequences are slighter. Arthur is grieved at the loss of his sister; Gawain and his brothers are furious with Gaheris, but, judging from Gawain’s complaint, they blame Gaheris as much for sparing Lamerok as for killing their mother. There is no equivalent scene of combat between the brothers to match the terrifying fraternal conflict

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depicted in the Folie.72 In this text Lamerok and his brother Drian meet their ends at the hands of Gawain, Agravain and Mordred, shortly after Lamerok has defeated Gawain at the Castle of Ten Knights and married the maiden there.73 The horror of sons at their mother’s sexual and culpable behaviour is unique to this episode: most other instances of male shame caused by women in Arthurian narrative are brought about by real or suspected cuckolding. Indeed, earlier in the Suite, Gaheris had rescued a bound and blindfolded Bademagu, left vulnerably exposed in his undergarments by an outraged Pellinor, who had caught Bademagu in bed with his wife. Gaheris agrees with Bademagu that Pellinor’s reaction was excessive.74 Gaheris’s feelings about his mother’s behaviour are complicated by a number of factors: the lady’s unmarried status, her choice of a poor if worthy knight, and, crucially, Lamerok’s membership of the lineage of her husband’s slayer. Moreover, Lamerok’s eminence increasingly threatens the status of Gawain and his brothers; it is no coincidence that Gaheris’s murder is provoked by the news that Lamerok has carried off the prize at an important tournament. Faucon notes that the feud is an excuse for wanting to eliminate a rival for chivalric distinction.75 Yet Gaheris remains undecided as to what action he will take until he witnesses the post-coital scene in the bedchamber. Both texts, but in particular the Tristan, draw attention to Gaheris’s sustained looking at Lamerok’s exposed body. What does this gaze signify? It is tempting for modern readers to assume a homoerotic interest on Gaheris’s part, but, as Richard Zeikowitz emphasizes, not all gazing by men at men is necessarily erotic. Gaheris and Lamerok mirror one another: each regards the other knight as handsome, valiant and brave, and so, as Zeikowitz suggests, frequently the gazing knight identifies with the object of his gaze – he wants to be, not to have sex with, the man he is looking at. In his handsomeness and courage, Lamerok is a potential role model for Gaheris, but if Gaheris wants to identify with Lamerok, then he must align himself with the man who is having a sexual relationship with his mother. Gaheris quickly refuses the disturbingly incestuous implications of this, neutralizing the sexual ambiguity of the situation by killing his mother.76 Both knights are now morally obliged to attack the other because of the queen’s sexual behaviour, but the pair, at least in the Folie, are reconciled with one another once the disruptive woman is removed. There could be no clearer example of how speedily the profound, socially dominant bonds between men in chivalry can reassert themselves over a dead female body.

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Gaheris’s decision for Lamerok and against his mother was not an easy one. His emotional prostration after the matricide is deeply felt, anticipated by the narrator’s comment that Gaheris loved his mother more than the other brothers. Yet his trauma is short-lived, he is soon up and about, ‘amusing himself’ in the forest. Though the narrator insistently calls Gaheris’s action a sin, misfortune, even ‘the work of the devil’, Arthur, Lamerok himself and, eventually, the other brothers decide that Gaheris should not be punished by permanent exile from the Round Table. The chivalric body swiftly closes ranks, mending the breaches caused by matricide and the murder of a man’s lover; the queen’s death is less important than Gaheris’s knightly career. The queen has paid the ultimate price for her independent sexuality; as Armstrong notes, in the world of clan loyalties, the honour of men is in part guaranteed by the chastity of its womenfolk. Malory’s Morgause might well take as her epitaph Lamerok’s lines quoted at the beginning of this chapter, in which she is invoked as ‘fayre queen of Orkeney, kynge Lottys wyff and modir unto sir Gawayne and to sir Gaherys, and modir to many other’.77 Though earlier in the ‘Book of Sir Tristram’ Lamerok asserts that his lady ‘is the fayryst lady that beryth the lyff’, her blood connections finally count for more than her beauty or charm.78 In Malory, Morgause is summoned by Gawain and his brothers to lodge in a castle near Camelot just so that they can ambush Lamerok.79 As in the Tristan, Malory’s source, the brothers’ grievances come to a head when Lamerok overcomes them all, particularly Gawain, in a tournament. Gawain summons his brothers and lists Lamerok’s misdeeds, suggesting, strikingly, that Lamerok’s affair with their mother is intended as revenge for Pellinor’s death at the brothers’ hands, a suggestion which the text does not elsewhere endorse.80 Gawain takes a more active part in the plot than in the Post-Vulgate Cycle, confirming his intermittent characterization in the Morte as ‘evir vengeable, and wher he hated he wolde be avenged with murther’.81 The plan goes awry, however, thanks to the impetuosity of Gaheris who follows Lamerok to his mother’s chamber. Awaiting his opportunity, he enters ‘with his swerede naked’, seizes his mother by the hair and cuts off her head. The sleeping Lamerok is drenched in his mistress’s blood, ‘the bloode that he loved passyng well’, the life force which had animated his lady and made her passionate. Immediately recognizing Gaheris, Lamerok reproaches him with matricide. Gaheris rehearses the enmity between their lineages, using the insulting familiar pronouns thou and thee. Lamerok interrupts to assert that Balin (who

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was indeed present at the battle), not Pellinor, killed Lot, but Gaheris, unpersuaded, orders him to leave the chamber. Gaheris’s conversation with the queen’s servants and the bringing of the body to Camelot is eliminated, but Arthur shows a proper sense of justice by acting swiftly to eject Gaheris from the court. Ever interested in the politics of faction, Malory adds a scene in which Lancelot and Arthur discuss the consequences of Morgause’s death, Lancelot anticipating rightly that this will result in the loss of both Tristram and Lamerok to the Round Table. Malory omits all the other consequences of Morgause’s death. Lamerok is killed offstage in an ambush by Gawain and the other brothers, with the exception of the virtuous Gareth. Palomides recounts Lamerok’s heroic defence – fighting three hours or more until treacherously stabbed in the back by Mordred – to Tristram and Dinadan, in the embarrassed presence of Gareth, who is already acquainted with his brothers’ reprehensible behaviour.82 The occasion of the story is the three knights’ approach to the tournament at Lonezep, a gathering which they compare to two important earlier gatherings, the Tournament of the Roche Dure, at which Tristram had triumphed, and the Tournament of Surluce, at which Lamerok and Lancelot had taken the prize, just before Lamerok met his death. The implication that Gawain and his brothers were moved as much by envy of Lamerok’s prowess as by the affair with Morgause is mooted once again; Dinadan models the proper response – admiration, not envy – for such a superior knight. Malory’s treatment of Morgause’s death focuses sharply on the bloodiness of her end; her blood, the corporeal humour which maintains the beauty and passion for which Lamerok loves her, is spattered across the scene. As Lamerok’s love complaint makes very clear, Morgause’s blood is her undoing, for it also runs in the veins of Gaheris, and for him the shameful passion of a woman to whom he is so closely related is too much to bear. ‘Now is my modir quytte of the, for she shall never shame her chyldryn’, he retorts to Lamerok. Malory speeds up the killing, eliminating the disturbing gazes of the Tristan: Gaheris strikes off his mother’s head before she has time to confront him with the body that gave birth to him. It is Lamerok who hurls himself out of bed to ask how her own son could murder ‘youre moder that bare you?’ Malory makes no mention of the love of Gaheris for his mother which is a prominent feature of the Post-Vulgate account; the killing has little psychological effect on him, and although the other brothers are temporarily angry with him, their alliance is soon renewed.

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Mother and Lover The Queen of Orkney’s maternity is usually problematic; because of her transgressive behaviour her child has to be concealed in the early texts. Nevertheless she gains a splendid son, the heroic, loyal Gawain, Arthur’s nephew and closest supporter. In the Vulgate and later texts, her bearing of Mordred, another lost-and-found child, brings about the downfall of the whole kingdom. But it is the legitimately born son, the one from whom she had never been alienated, the one who loved her most, who kills her. The Post-Vulgate Folie and the Tristan understand Gaheris as the victim of confused emotions: he wrestles with love, shame, a momentary identification with his mother’s lover and the shock of witnessing his mother’s sexual nature. No wonder he contracts a psychosomatic illness after the killing, one which is entirely congruent with a psychological understanding of the conflictedness of the loved and loving son. Malory edits out much of this, satisfied with depicting Gaheris as the ‘inhuman avenger of family justice’, as Faucon characterizes him in the Tristan.83 Gaheris doubles Gawain in a fraternal tendency towards savage vengefulness and a touchy concern for honour which will have serious repercussions at the end of Malory’s story. Where Morgan and Viviane–Nenyve are characterized by their freedom to initiate erotic relationships and their independence from the courtly world, where the Lady of the Lake retains her autonomy whilst upholding chivalry and acting as better than a mother to Lancelot, the Queen of Orkney is largely characterized as a mother. She produces numerous male children, two of whom are born as a result of irregular sexual relations. Unlike Morgan, she acts to uphold chivalry; with a keen eye for political realities and with traditional loyalty to her own blood line, she promotes Arthur’s cause in the early days of his reign. Her erotic relationships are complicated; a pre-marital liaison results in an unwanted child, her extramarital affair is revealed as incestuous, her final love affair is with the son of her husband’s slayer. When she acts within the paradigm of good mother, whether strategically advising her sons to defect to Arthur or descending in wrath to enforce the proper treatment of Gareth, the texts approve of her. Outside that paradigm, when she exercises an independence which is largely understood as sexual, the queen finds herself betrayed by the men she deals with. Even Lamerok abandons the obligation to avenge her in favour of reconciliation with her killer, and shortly afterwards marries the maiden of the Castle of the Ten Knights. The queen’s

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opportunities to express herself are highly restricted: she speaks at length only thrice in the Arthurian tradition. The first time is to urge Gawain to abandon his interest in hunting, to seek military glory and join Arthur, despite her husband’s opposition. Second, she is given space to profess her faith, to evoke the martyred Christian virgin of hagiography, when she is tormented by the Saxon king Thaurus. Her suffering becomes a spectacle, a pretext less for the audience to admire her fortitude than for Gawain to gain honour in killing the enemy king. Finally, Morgause speaks to demand of Arthur an explanation for the disappearance of Gareth, asserting her maternal rights not only over this favourite son, but over Gawain, Gaheris and Agravain, all of whom kneel before her to ask her blessing. Otherwise she is silent; the texts provide no sense of what it is like to be the Queen of Orkney, or how deeply she desired Lamerok to risk all for him. Just before her death in Malory we learn that she loves Lamerok as much as he loves her. Our last apprehension of her emotions comes when we witness her abject terror when a murderous knight bursts into her private chamber; our last sight of her witnesses her head sailing a lance’s length across the room. The Queen of Orkney lacks the magical knowledge of her sister and the other enchantresses, and this leaves her powerless indeed. She cannot exercise her autonomy outside the socially approved maternal role; as Armstrong suggests, she becomes a commodity, traded between men. First Uther exchanges her to Lot, then Gawain withholds her from her husband as he negotiates to gain his father’s support for Arthur. When the queen decides to love where she will, she leaves her own realm of Orkney and moves into the patriarchal territory of Camelot. Here she becomes victim of an honour killing, a death temporarily deplored by her other male kin, before eventually they reconcile themselves to her killer. Where Morgan rejects the ties of kinship with brother, husband and son, is consistently unsuccessful in her other erotic relationships, and yet outlives the Arthurian polity to retreat to an Other World of idealized chivalry in her domain of Avalon, the Queen of Orkney retains her place in her lineage, relying on the status with which being mother to five prominent sons endows her. Yet finally the power she wields is parasitic on her compliance with masculine honour codes; when she transgresses against these she has no power to escape from the consequences, even at the hands of the man who loves her most.

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Vivien and the Victorians

The Enchantress in the Renaissance

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’ Morte Darthur was the last substantial treatment of the Arthurian story in English for centuries; indeed Arthurian themes were going out of fashion throughout Europe. Romance, of course, survived as a genre; knights, ladies and enchantresses still had great popular appeal. While Spenser’s The Faerie Queene features Prince Arthur searching for Queen Gloriana, with whom he has fallen in love from afar, the poem does not pretend to tell an Arthurian story.1 The enchantress, though, had a continuing life: the Fata Morgana of the Italian Tristan translations, whom we met in Chapter , splits into a number of fairy figures in Italian Renaissance romance. In Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato, first published in , Morgana is allegorized as Wealth (she is the ‘fairy of treasure’) and she takes on the characteristics of the allegorical figure Opportunity, who must be seized by the forelock and forced to do her captor’s will.2 Other fairies have enchanted gardens where knights are retained and from which they have to be rescued.3 Boiardo invents Alcina, an enchantress with Circean characteristics. In the unfinished Innamorato she kidnaps the knight Astolfo, persuading him to step on to the back of a whale and thus brings him to her island kingdom. Alcina’s story is concluded in Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (first published in , and reissued in a definitive edition in ) where her relationship to Circe and to Dido becomes apparent.4 Here the hero Ruggiero arrives on Alcina’s island. He is surprised to be addressed suddenly by a myrtle bush, who

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turns out to be Astolfo transformed. Astolfo had been Alcina’s lover, but when she tired of him she bewitched him. Other trees and animals on the island are also former lovers. Ruggiero is in turn seduced by Alcina; for the first time ever, she falls deeply in love.5 The helpful enchantress Melissa arrives on the island with a magic ring which disenchants its wearer. When Ruggiero puts it on, he sees Alcina as exceptionally ugly, since allegorically she represents the seductions of Vice, and he is glad to leave the island with the other disenchanted knights. Alcina is no longer primarily a personification; as Julia Kisacky points out, she has become a character, and her abandonment causes her real pain and despair, not simply the theatrical irritation of a Vice losing its grip on a victim. Alcina is desperate enough to contemplate suicide, like Dido or Cleopatra, but, since death is impossible for fairies, she is condemned to live on. Ariosto intends the moral observation that appearance and essence are not the same thing; that one should look below the surface and not be swayed by physical attractiveness. In developing Alcina from the hints he found in Boiardo, Ariosto created a potent and long-lived character.6 Alcina is the ancestress of the more highly allegorized enchantress Acrasia, who appears in Book II of Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. She rules over a ‘wandering Island’ where she has established her ‘Bowre of blis’. Acrasia’s name means ‘Incontinence’ (in the sense of the opposite of Temperance, the ruling virtue of Book II). Guyon, the hero of the book, accompanied by a Palmer or pilgrim who represents his reason, sails across the ocean to find and destroy Acrasia after hearing of her treatment of a certain Mortdant. Mortdant’s pregnant wife Amavia had rescued Mortdant from Acrasia’s enchantment, but Acrasia had placed a curse on him so that he dropped dead when he first took a drink outside her kingdom. Amavia gives birth to a child with blood-covered hands and kills herself, living just long enough to tell Guyon and the Palmer her story.7 Reaching Acrasia’s island, Guyon and the Palmer attain the Bower of Bliss where they espy Acrasia holding in her lap the sleeping head of her latest lover. Acrasia is addicted to the new lover, Verdant, gazing at him as if ‘seeking medicine’, but she also feeds off him like a vampire: ‘through his humid eyes did suck his spright [spirit]’.8 Guyon and the Palmer are too temperate to be much affected by the sight of sensual perfection; they capture Acrasia and Verdant in a net and quickly persuade Verdant to reject the enchantress through ‘counsell sage’.9 The Bower is destroyed, those former lovers whom Acrasia had transformed into beasts are returned to human form, and the

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captive enchantress is sent off to the court of the Faerie Queene.10 The Bower is a beautiful place; it shares the features of the Earthly Paradise, and the reader regrets the masculine violence which Guyon unleashes upon it.11 It’s noticeable, as Greenblatt comments, that Acrasia might have been revealed as a hideous hag as Alcina is, but Spenser leaves her beauty untarnished.12 From the sinister way in which Acrasia hovers over Verdant it is evident she expects to gain more than just sexual satisfaction from him. Early modern theorizing of witchcraft popularized the idea of the succubus, a female figure – sometimes a supernatural emanation, sometimes a witch in thrall to demonic powers – who drains the vital juices from men, damaging their masculinity by making them too enervated to fight or to resist temptation. Medieval enchantresses, as we saw in Chapters  and , might try to paralyse the men they desired in order to neutralize their violence and preserve them as objects of lust, but the idea of a life-draining force is new.13 From now on, the enchantress becomes difficult to separate from the witch; she is rarely capable of acting as an agent for good. Arthurian romance drops out of fashion in England too, after the publication of Thomas Shelton’s translation of Don Quixote in  and . Milton’s Latin poetry suggests that he was giving serious thought to, even doing some preliminary planning for, an Arthurian epic, but the project came to nothing. Apart from Henry Purcell’s opera King Arthur: Or the British Worthy (), with a libretto by Dryden owing almost nothing to medieval traditions, the king’s literary popularity faded until the early nineteenth century.14

The Gothic Revival and Early Victorian Treatments The resurgence of interest in Arthurian story as the nineteenth century began was a development from the ‘Gothic revival’ of the late eighteenth century. Antiquarians had begun to investigate the medieval past; in  Percy published his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, a collection of medieval poems and ballads. The vigorous, passionate stories they told captured the imagination of such influential writers as Wordsworth and Sir Walter Scott.15 This was a time of renewed interest in the nation’s past; historians were investigating what it meant to be both British and English in a time of imperial expansion overseas. Against the backdrop of the Industrial Revolution with its impetus towards urbanization and mechanization, people began to search for alternative values in the workplace and the family during the Victorian era. Many recommended

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a return to simple medieval piety in matters of religion; social orderliness, and the pre-capitalist virtues of honest toil and loving craftsmanship were nostalgically re-imagined as offering a better alternative to the present day.16 Despite the general popularity of medieval themes, the rediscovery of Malory’s Morte Darthur came surprisingly late. The last edition of Malory had been published in  by Stansby.17 A poor transcription of Caxton’s printed text of , it was highly censored. Swearing, profanity and ‘superstitious speeches’ were cut out; seventeenth-century Protestantism had no time for such Catholic symbols as the Holy Grail. In  the poet Robert Southey took up a project mooted, then abandoned, by Sir Walter Scott, of producing a new, unexpurgated edition of Caxton. The project was delayed by difficulty in laying hands on a complete Caxton, but eventually a previously unknown copy turned up for sale in . Southey used this as the basis for his edition, published in .18 Almost as important as providing a decent Malory text was Southey’s introduction. He includes a great deal of material from the Vulgate tradition, borrowing a French reprint of the  edition of the Estoire de Merlin and the Prophesies de Merlin.19 It is thus primarily from Southey’s introduction, not from the highly abbreviated account of Nenyve’s dealings with Merlin in Malory, that the nineteenth century got its ideas about Merlin’s beloved. Southey included many excerpts from the Estoire to piece together the beguiling of Merlin, noting its difference from Malory and other versions: ‘though the termination is the same as it is described in other Romances, the circumstances are very differently stated’.20 Nevertheless, Southey’s summary shows the Estoire’s Vivien as only pretending to love Merlin. Just as the  version of the Prophesies substantially invented the Lady of the Lake’s remorse for her enclosure of Merlin, similarly the  Estoire adds such remarks as (in Southey’s translation), ‘When Viviane heard this, for her great treason, and the better to delude and deceive him, she put her arms around his neck and began to kiss him.’ This gives quite a different impression of the relationship from the account of the earlier manuscript versions as outlined in Chapter . Southey observes, ‘the writer very properly remarks upon Merlin, for having taught his mistress so much, “quil en fut depuis, et est encore tenu pour fol”’ (he was then, and is still taken as a fool), a phrase that would provide the final lines of Tennyson’s ‘Vivien’.21 The  Vivien also regrets the enclosure: ‘And often time she regretted what she had done, for she had thought that the thing he had taught her could not be true, and willingly would she have let

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him out if she could.’22 Southey’s version of Vivien would prove as culturally powerful as Tennyson’s for nineteenth-century imaginative engagement with the enchantress. Though Southey’s edition was a luxury one, produced in small numbers and in an expensive format, Malory became increasingly popular after . A corresponding interest in Arthur developed in France, in part as a consequence of Breton nationalism. Theodore de la Villemarqué, a noted young Breton scholar, published an account of a trip to the Forest of Brocéliande, the traditional site of Merlin’s tomb, in the Revue de Paris in .23 His article inspired one of the earliest Victorian literary treatments of the subject, R.D. Buchanan’s undistinguished  poem ‘Merlin’s Tomb’, which appeared in the Glasgow University Album for that year.24 The poem opens and closes with the sorrow of king and court when Merlin has disappeared: Arthur weeps in Carduel, His Merlin’s mystic doom; And Gawayne seeks by down and dell, In vain for Merlin’s tomb.

Part first shows Viviane boasting of her magical ability before she wheedles the spell of enclosure from Merlin, promising that he will be ‘a happy bondsman’ and she ‘a gentle jailor’. Buchanan keeps faithfully to the Estoire version of the tale; in Part second the couple are found in Brocéliande in the spring. Merlin falls asleep under the hawthorn tree and Viviane seizes the chance to try out the spell. Merlin frowns and sighs when he finds he is imprisoned; Viviane laughs and says he has paid the price that a fool who trusts women must pay. Nevertheless she does not abandon him: And there that lady fond and fair, The Lady of the Lake, By day, by night, will oft repair, Her sweet solace to take.

Charles Louandre, also writing on Merlin in the Revue de Paris in , emphasises that Viviane wishes to care for, not to destroy, Merlin: ‘she wished, in binding Merlin close to her, to make of her arms an eternal cradle of caresses, not to prepare his tomb.’25 Morgan, in contrast, scarcely figures in early Victorian literature; one of the few early references to her is in Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s  semi-comic epic King Arthur.26 Early in this splendidly swashbuckling tale, Arthur is the

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guest of a Vandal chieftain who hopes to secure Arthur’s sister as wife for his son. Arthur explains that he has only the one sister, ‘Borne by my mother to her former lord;/ Not young.’27 It is not until William Morris’s The Earthly Paradise is published in – that Morgan returns to poetic prominence, and there she is the figure of chanson de geste, not the Arthurian enchantress and Vivien’s rival. ‘August’ in The Earthly Paradise retells the story of Ogier the Dane.28 As in the versions outlined in Chapter , Ogier is destined from birth to become Morgan’s lover. After a long career in the world he is shipwrecked on her island and the pair are happily united. Morgan allows him to return to the world to help defend Paris from pagan attackers, and he becomes the lover of the Queen of France. He is about to be crowned king when Morgan comes to call him home to Avalon. Ogier, not entirely understanding what is happening to him, trades the crown of Charlemagne for Morgan’s diadem of forgetfulness. ‘All was grown a dream,/ His work was over, his reward was come,/ Why should he loiter longer from his home?’29 Chiefly because of our perennial fascination with the dynamic between the old man and the young woman, Vivien is the enchantress who colonizes the Victorian literary imagination.30

Arnold’s Vivian Southey’s introduction and the essays of de la Villemarqué and Louandre were easily available to cultured British readers. They outlined the idea of the sage and his capricious mistress, which, as the tale of Aristotle and Phyllis had done for the thirteenth century, touched a chord for Victorian men. That a wise and virtuous counsellor of the king could throw away his public service, his honour and, in the end, his life, for what is largely envisaged as sexual passion, excited both fear and a secret understanding. In a society where sexual matters were taboo, and where normal relations between the sexes were firmly constrained by ideas of morality, the susceptibility of Merlin to Vivien took on a fascination which makes the story key to understanding much about mid-Victorian culture. Matthew Arnold was the first major poet to treat the theme, introducing the Vivien story within his  poem Tristram and Iseult.31 The tale is told in the final part of the poem by Tristram’s wife, Iseult of Brittany, to her children after the death of both Tristram and his lover, Iseult of Ireland. Arnold himself claimed to have taken his story from Malory, rather than from Southey or the Revue de Paris articles.32

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The story is told by their mother to the children, but the voice narrating is the poet’s, not Iseult’s. The landscapes of Iseult’s home near the sea, and the forest of Brocéliande, are finely invoked: ‘the deep forest-glades of Broceliande,/ Through whose green boughs the golden sunshine creeps.’ The motivation of Vivian (as Arnold spells the name) is kept back to the end, but she is already framed as a ‘false fay’ whose eyes ‘sparkled with mocking glee’. Dressed in green, she is in tune with her surroundings; ‘the spirit of the woods was in her face’. At length they come to a clearing where the hawthorn is in blossom, and ‘the light sea of leaf and bough … plays all around them’. Merlin decides to halt. Though the brook is ‘brawling’ and they hear ‘the weird chipping of the woodpecker’, everything else is delightful; ‘no fairer resting-place a man could find’. Merlin falls into a sleep already ‘more like death’; Vivian casts her spell and departs, ‘whither she will’, leaving Merlin there ‘in that daisied circle’ ‘till the judgment-day’. Her motive, drawn, as Paull Baum notes, from Malory, ‘for she was passing weary of his love’, seems to be simply boredom.33 The poem ends there; Arnold’s Vivian has no regrets; nor, it is implied, will she return to keep the enchanter company. Arnold embeds in his tranquil meditation on Iseult’s widowhood a story which seems more ancient than Iseult’s own time.34 Iseult herself does not comment directly on the tale; Arnold leaves his readers to draw their own conclusion about how Iseult reads her Breton predecessor. Barbara Fass Leavy sees Iseult’s story-telling as offering a kind of consolation for the quiet life of widowhood dedicated to her children that she must lead. Her free-spirited heroine has no need to sacrifice herself to men’s passion or align her desire with a male agenda.35 Beverly Taylor adds: ‘Vivian without regret delivers Merlin to an enchanted peace attained by Tristram only in a poet’s fanciful re-interpretation of his death. At the same time she frees herself from the sorrow attending both Iseults.’36 Contemporary critics generally liked both the novelty of the story, the fine medieval detail and the landscapes of ‘Tristram and Iseult’. Arnold himself, writing in , wondered if the introduction of the Merlin story were not too disruptive: ‘the story of Merlin was brought in on purpose to relieve the poem which would else … have ended much too sadly, but perhaps the new element introduced is too much.’37 Despite his and others’ reservations, Arnold had succeeded in bringing Arthurian themes – or at least the Merlin story – out of the hands of minor writers like Buchanan, and into the high cultural domain.

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Tennyson and Vivien Had critical reception been kinder to the several Arthurian poems Tennyson included in his first collections of poetry, his Arthurian epic The Idylls of the King might have emerged earlier in the poet laureate’s long career, and his authoritative depiction of Vivien might have forestalled Arnold’s. But the critics were not convinced: John Sterling, writing in the Quarterly Review in  called ‘Morte D’Arthur’ a ‘mere ingenious exercise of fancy’.38 Fifteen years elapsed before Tennyson took up the Arthurian subject again, by which time the literary climate had changed. Book clubs proliferated, providing more or less accurate, accessible versions of medieval texts, giving, as Debra Mancoff says, ‘the fluency necessary to comprehension’.39 Arnold’s ‘Tristan’ poem had been published and William Morris’s ‘The Defence of Guenevere’ () appeared just before Tennyson’s first four Idylls. There was now an eager public for poems exploring the complex, dramatic emotions of women, provided that these were safely contained in the past, rather than underwriting potentially scandalous female behaviour in the present. Two of Tennyson’s Arthurian poems had been market-tested before their publication; he had privately circulated ‘Enid’ and ‘Nimuë’, subtitled ‘The True and the False’, in . Nimuë’s name was changed to Vivien after Tennyson met Edward Burne-Jones in , shortly after Burne-Jones had finished his mural depicting Nimuë at the Oxford Union. Georgiana Burne-Jones recalls: ‘Vivien’ had been written two years before, but was then called by its author ‘Nimuë’– the name of the Damsel of the Lake with whom, as she is represented in Malory’s Morte D’Arthur, Edward’s imagination had been dealing so closely in his Oxford picture – and Mr Prinsep recalls his pained face and eager expostulation when he found that the poet in his Idyll had modernized and altered the character while preserving the ancient name. ‘Tennyson’, says Mr Prinsep, ‘good-naturedly changed it to Vivien’.40

Tennyson added two more matched examples of the ‘True’ and the ‘False’, ‘Elaine’ and ‘Guenevere’, when the four Idylls came out in July . They were an immediate success: ten thousand copies sold in the first week of publication, vindicating Tennyson’s confidence that his venture was timely. ‘Vivien’ opens with the striking set piece of Merlin and Vivien sitting under a huge oak tree in the forest of Brocéliande, a scene memorably illustrated by Gustave Doré for the  edition.41 In a pose of assumed abjection, Vivien lies at Merlin’s feet. She has followed the sage to the forest in the hope of learning

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the charm of enclosure so that she may destroy him. Her motive, it appears, is simply to gain fame – or notoriety – for herself, ‘fancying that her glory would be great/ According to his greatness whom she quench’d.’42 Once the initial tableau comes to life, Vivien unleashes her verbal and physical powers against the weary sage. Paradise Lost is constantly recalled through the poem’s allusions to the archetypal disposition of man, woman, snake and tree. Merlin notes Vivien’s curiosity, ‘this vice in you which ruin’d man/ Thro’ woman the first hour.’43 But Vivien figures the serpent as well as Eve; rising from the ground, she glides up Merlin’s body, locking him in her embrace, tangling herself in his beard and pretending to be entrapped by him. Later in the idyll, when she threatens to leave Merlin, ‘the snake of gold slid from her hair, the braid/ Slipt and uncoil’d itself, she wept afresh’.44 Of the  Idylls, ‘Vivien’, the critic James Rosenberg suggests, is the ‘psychologically subtlest’ and ‘narratively simplest’.45 Central to the psychological realism of the encounter is the virtuoso range of emotions that Vivien displays; her gestures and speech veer between a feigned cheerfulness and her true but concealed feelings. ‘Smiling saucily’, ‘smiling mournfully’ ‘smiling as in wrath’, she argues with Merlin. A flash of petulance appears as she repeats the gossip of the Round Table; when Merlin suggests that her slanderous remarks stem from her own mistaken belief that she herself is the subject of slander, she is described as ‘frowning in true anger’. Even so, he is forced to concede the existence of Lancelot and Guenevere’s affair, their ‘commerce’, as Vivien vulgarly calls it, applying the language of trade to sexual relations. The crisis comes when Vivien overplays her hand; ‘deeming Merlin overborne’, she rails against every member of the Round Table, till even the wizard seems to suspect the danger he is in.46 Muttering to himself that her animus against the knights is the consequence of sexual rejection, Merlin compares her behaviour with that of ‘harlots’. Catching the word, Vivien reacts with the violence of recognition, first with swiftly suppressed rage, then with endless tears. Finally the storm, threatened from the first line of the poem, which symbolizes not only the coming sexual encounter, but the entire psychological battle, breaks. In the tempest the wizard yields to the woman, both sexually and intellectually; by the time ‘the storm, its burst of passion spent,/ Moaning and calling out of other lands,/ Had left the ravaged woodland… what should not have been had been.’47 Merlin too is spent; the dramatization of the Victorian fear of female sexuality, the vulnerability of the desiring man to the deceptive, rapacious woman, is almost

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played out.48 Merlin ‘in the hollow oak lay as dead’. Quickly Vivien enchants him – it is a simple matter of ‘woven paces and of waving hands’ – then she races away from the scene, believing her aim to be achieved. ‘I have made his glory mine’, she exults.49 Vivien indeed becomes the ‘harlot’ which Merlin, she imagined, had called her. The name clings to her in both early and later reception of the Idyll; she is consistently interpreted in terms of that threat to the sanctity of the Victorian home and family: the prostitute.50 James Spedding, seeing an early version of the poem in , had observed it was ‘much injured by the predominance of harlotry’.51 Swinburne, writing in , in response to R. Williams Buchanan’s attack on Dante Gabriel Rossetti in ‘The Fleshly School of Poetry’, thoroughly arraigns The Idylls of the King. He accuses Vivien of, among other crimes, ‘incredible and incomparable vulgarity’, notoriously calling her ‘such a sordid creature as plucks men passing by the sleeve’, and characterising the poem as ‘describing the erotic fluctuations and vacillations of a dotard under the moral and physical manipulation of a prostitute’.52 Swinburne’s language betrays the influence of William Acton’s study of prostitution; Acton memorably identifies the prostitutes of the West End as ‘those painted, dressy women flaunting along the streets and boldly accosting the passerby’.53 Swinburne’s ferocity has little to do with genuine moral outrage at Tennyson’s poem and more to do with scoring points against Buchanan, whom he saw as Tennyson’s ally and whom he blamed for Rossetti’s collapse after Buchanan’s criticisms were published. Modern critics focus on Vivien’s sexuality and her allegorical meaning. Vivien’s seduction, then destruction of Merlin, plays out the Idylls’ larger theme, ‘shadowing Sense at war with Soul’.54 ‘Merlin’s yielding to the seductive wiles of Vivien is merely the grossest example of the abject surrender of the intellect to the flesh’, observes Jerome Buckley severely.55 Beverly Taylor cogently observes that Vivien’s threat comes from her quickness of intellect and desire for knowledge as much as from her seductiveness.56 Between the poems of  and the four Idylls, Tennyson had been working on The Princess (published in ), a poem which engaged with questions of women’s education, then a subject of popular controversy.57 Vivien embodies the danger of the educated woman, distracted from the duties of home and family and seeking to possess equal knowledge with men. Merlin treats her intelligence condescendingly, but in the end Vivien’s endless talking, her rhetorical claims to love and respect him, interspersed with threats of disobedience and of

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suicidal despair, exhaust the sage. The poem thus juxtaposes ‘two attributes that popular discourse represented as naturally incompatible and therefore doubly threatening in combination: the power of female sexual allure and the power of women’s booklearning’, Taylor suggests.58 Vivien is no straightforward personification of Vice, she has a cosmopolitan charm, and is adept at deploying the clichés of romantic love, even if she does not love herself. Her motivation remains shadowy. She is little concerned with virginity; she is not particularly interested in magic except as a means to destroy Merlin. Tennyson’s later additions to the  text, as we shall see below, add information about her background, leaguing her with Modred (an afterthought which comes as late as ), and make her an agent of King Mark, still without entirely accounting for her actions and character. Before Tennyson published the final version of the Idylls of the King it was clear to him that ‘Vivien’ came too early. In  he writes, ‘I must have two more Idylls at the least to make ‘V.’ come later into the Poem, as it comes in far too soon as it stands’.59 He was still tinkering with ‘Vivien’, adding Merlin’s melancholy forebodings (ll. –) in this revision; Vivien’s childhood, arrival at, and activities in, Arthur’s court (ll. –) were added in . Vivien acquires a tragic infancy and is given an ill-defined mission by King Mark of Cornwall to make trouble at Camelot.60 Vivien’s father had died fighting against Arthur, her mother, dramatically if implausibly, had given birth to her on the battlefield. Fostered at Mark’s court, where she is clear-sighted about her own corruption, Vivien appears to have been Mark’s mistress. She claims to have loved him, though her words are tinged with irony, contempt and self-contempt in equal measure. Vivien’s new biography, as Rebecca Umland points out, matches that of the archetypal woman of the streets, abandoned, seduced, then turning to prostitution, yet Vivien launches herself confidently into the world of the court.61 She evolves a half-formed plan of blackmail to gain social advancement, picturing herself as a ‘little rat that bor[es] in the dyke’, to whom Lancelot will have to be gracious, and the queen promote among her ladies.62 Yet all Vivien achieves in the court, besides her failure to seduce Arthur – who scarcely registers her existence – is to whisper gossip in the lower echelons of the Round Table. Tennyson’s additions to ‘Merlin and Vivien’, as the Idyll was retitled, did not make much impact on the larger structure of the work. In – ‘Balin and Balan’ was composed to redress the balance and was published as the last of the Idylls in .

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‘Balin and Balan’ introduces Vivien immediately as a disruptive presence. The ‘wholesome music of the wood’ is ‘dumb’d’ by her ‘warbling’. She is already a contradictory figure on her first appearance; her song, which has silenced the birds, seems to celebrate the beauty of the natural world: ‘The wayside blossoms open to the blaze/ The whole wood-world is one full peal of praise’.63 Vivien reveals herself as an unregenerate pagan, in opposition to the militantly Christian values of Arthur’s court before she arrives there, but her main role in ‘Balin and Balan’ is, as in ‘Merlin and Vivien’, principally to spread slander, as she tells Balin that her squire had witnessed a romantic rendezvous between Lancelot and Guenevere. Although Vivien’s story is a plausible fabrication, it chimes with Balin’s suspicions about the couple, precipitating one of his attacks of murderous rage, and causing his own death at the hands of his brother. Vivien mocks the dead men as ‘brainless bulls’ and rides away, with a cry of ‘Leave them to the wolves’.64 In the context of the whole work, the depiction of Vivien in ‘Balin and Balan’ is a striking re-imagining of her character, amoral, eloquent and ingenious. Her casual malignity stands in sharp relief to Arthur’s high-mindedness, displayed earlier in the Idylls. The account she gives of her circumstances, escaping from an evil, lustful king, is a rehearsal for the story she will spin to Guenevere when she arrives at Arthur’s court in ‘Merlin and Vivien’, a story which contradicts the account the narrator gives of her past earlier in that poem. Tennyson’s later additions to the character offer some explanation for Vivien’s wickedness in terms of a tragic infancy and early corruption at Mark’s court, but knowing more about her lessens the mystery and power of the Vivien of the  Idyll. After her enclosure of Merlin, she returns to court, still ‘lissome … the wiliest and the worst’ of Guenevere’s ladies.65 She conspires with Modred; discovering Lancelot and Guenevere’s last tryst she alerts Arthur’s nephew so that he and his ‘creatures’ can catch the lovers. Tennyson’s work was enormously influential, not only for further literary treatments – even parodies, as will be seen below, but also for visual realizations of the Arthurian characters. Rossetti and William Holman Hunt were engaged on the illustrations for the big  Moxon edition of Tennyson’s poems when Burne-Jones and Frederick Sandys first became acquainted with Rossetti. Rossetti interpreted the text rather freely, to Tennyson’s displeasure, while Holman Hunt was taken to task by the poet for depicting the Lady of Shalott with ‘her hair flying all over the shop’.66 The renowned illustrator Gustav Doré produced a set of illustrations for the – editions of the four original

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Idylls. These were succeeded by the series of photographs taken for an expensive ‘cabinet’ edition of the second edition of the Idylls published in . For this Tennyson asked his neighbour on the Isle of Wight, Julia Margaret Cameron, to photograph his main characters; as Joanne Lukitsh shows, Doré’s engravings strongly influenced Cameron’s realizations of scenes involving the four heroines of the  Idylls.67 By this time Tennyson’s characters had acquired an independent existence in the popular mind. Thus the model for Vivien was by no means happy to be assigned her particular role; ‘I very much objected to this … because Vivien did not seem to be a very nice character to assume’, she later recalled.68 The photographic session was made more difficult because Merlin, Cameron’s husband, could not restrain himself from chuckling while the negative was being exposed.69 The photographer herself acknowledged that the model was not ideal: ‘she is not wicked eno’ for she is a sweet girl’.70 Vivien, in a light-coloured dress with a brocade sash, gazes directly into Merlin’s eyes, her hand slightly tangled in the sage’s long white beard. Her lids are lowered and her expression is solemn; there is no hint of her ‘smiling saucily’ or using guile, while Merlin looks kindly rather than lustful or impatient.71 For many Victorians, Tennyson’s – and others’ – medievalism looked like romantic escapism. Nevertheless medievalism could offer a distanced forum for investigating current social concerns. Though ‘Vivien’ caused some adverse comment, it did not attract the scandal of Rossetti’s ‘Jenny’, which, in its various versions composed between  and , gave sympathetic treatment to a contemporary fallen woman, outraging Ruskin and provoking Buchanan’s attack in ‘The Fleshly School of Poetry’.72 Vivien has, allowing for the difference in setting, some of the traits of the prostitute, as critics from Swinburne to Umland have observed. But beyond this precise socio-historical reading, Vivien embodies more generally Victorian fears about the unmarried and uncontrolled woman: educated, ambitious, sexual, gossiping and dangerous. Although Tennyson foregrounds her archetypal associations with Milton’s Eve, her contemporary resonances were inescapable for the Laureate’s readers and critics, providing a scandalous frisson to their contemplation of the Arthurian past.

The Enchantresses at Oxford Two names stand out as painters of Vivien/Nimuë, and Morgan in the nineteenth century: Edward Burne-Jones and Frederick Sandys. Both were highly influenced by their senior, Rossetti, but where the older man left Arthurian

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themes behind after the s, Sandys’ brief career in large-subject painting revolved around the enchantresses. Burne-Jones never abandoned his interest in the Arthurian legend, in particular the theme of Merlin and Nimuë, the name which he had wrested back from Tennyson, and by which he always thought of the enchantress.73 Burne-Jones’s earliest experiment with his recurrent subject was undertaken at Rossetti’s behest. At the end of June , Rossetti, William Morris and the architect Benjamin Woodward made a trip to Oxford to see the University Museum and the newly completed Debating Hall at the Oxford Union (now the Union Library), which Woodward had designed.74 Rossetti playfully suggested that he and a team of fellow artists should decorate in fresco the Hall’s window bays, a plan to which Woodward and the undergraduate committee enthusiastically agreed. Woodward thought Rossetti’s Arthurian scheme would be greatly in keeping with the Gothic style of his chamber. Rossetti swiftly recruited to his project a number of aspiring artists: Morris; Burne-Jones; young Val Prinsep, Julia Margaret Cameron’s nephew and pupil of G.F. Watts; Roddam Spencer Stanhope, grandson of the Earl of Leicester; and the somewhat older John Hungerford Pollen. Pollen had painted the roof of Merton College chapel and hence had some experience of large-scale painting. Other artists, such as Holman Hunt, declined, lacking enthusiasm for working without pay: Rossetti proposed only to charge for expenses. Rossetti’s plan had numerous drawbacks. Fresco painting, a technique newly revived by the young German artistic movement, the Nazarenes, had been successful in warmer climates. Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld’s frescoes depicting scenes from the Nibelungenlied in the Residenz Palace in Munich have survived well, but it is not a technique suited to the damp of Oxford. The plaster in the bays had not yet dried out, nor was the surface adequately primed, so that it required numerous coats. The cement between the bricks showed clearly through the plaster and, most crucially of all, each bay is pierced by two large windows; not only do these interrupt the surface, but the light coming in through them makes the painting almost impossible to see. Despite the unpromising situation, many of the paintings were surprisingly successful. Stylistic influences included the medieval illuminated manuscripts which Rossetti, Burne-Jones and Morris examined in the Bodleian Library, and Dürer engravings, borrowed from Ruskin. Rossetti’s own scene, ‘Sir Lancelot Asleep before the Shrine of the Sancgrael’ was adjudged most successful, but Burne-Jones’s composition was ‘a perfect masterpiece’, said Rossetti admiringly,

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and Holman Hunt was also full of praise.75 Coventry Patmore, reporting on the project for the Saturday Review, identified ‘a style of colouring so brilliant as to make the walls look like the margin of a highly-illuminated manuscript.’76 Burne-Jones’s theme was ‘Merlin lured into the Pit by the Lady of the Lake’, a composition which managed to incorporate the windows in a sensitive way. Patmore notes ‘the colour is excellent, and the figure of Nimuë full of repose and noble natural grace’. In the picture, Nimuë stands to the left and Merlin to the right; they face inwards towards the pit or well of imprisonment, and are separated by the windows. Nimuë holds a lute, her eyes cast down with a sad, thoughtful expression (Plate ). The lute is not mentioned in Malory; Burne-Jones employs it perhaps to suggest that it is the sweetness of music rather than sexual desire that leads Merlin on to his doom.77 Val Prinsep’s ‘Nimuë bringing Sir Pelleas to Ettarde after their Quarrel’ (Plate ) is a remarkable piece of work; John Christian speculates that Prinsep’s mentor Watts may have helped with the design.78 Nimuë, blonde and thoughtful, stands on the left of the bay, raising her arms gracefully over the window arch, as if to solicit Pelleas’s attention. Between the windows is Pelleas, looking back at Ettard, on the right of the second window. A friend, fully armed, leans on his shoulder. Pelleas has one hand around his companion’s shoulders, while the other is close to his heart. Red-haired Ettard gazes at Pelleas with heavy-lidded eyes; her hands are clasped in sorrow. Prinsep’s picture deftly captures the psychology of the moment, the welcoming warmth of Nimuë’s true love against the realization, coming all too late for Ettard, of the quality of the man she has scorned. Pelleas has a final backward glance for his past beloved. John Hungerford Pollen’s picture, ‘King Arthur receiving Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake’ (Plate ), shows another avatar of the enchantress. The crowded nature of Pollen’s composition points up the superior eye of BurneJones and Prinsep for simplicity of design. The Lady, garlanded with flowers and with a solemn expression, watches at the left. Merlin stands behind the king, who kneels to receive the sword offered by an arm clothed in samite. The weapon is awkwardly crammed on a diagonal between the windows while a quizzical horse looks on from the right. The themes that the artists selected for the chamber were by no means as edifying as the University authorities might have wished. Poulson summarizes: ‘ranged round the dome of the undergraduate debating society … are paintings dealing directly or indirectly with adultery, fornication, sexual obsession,

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and sexual betrayal.’79 Rossetti and his band had chosen some obscure scenes from the Morte Darthur; indeed Rossetti, more taken with the idea of Malory than with fidelity to the text itself, chose to paint an imagined scene from the Grail Quest. Rossetti had been introduced to Southey’s edition of Malory by Morris and Burne-Jones; for these three, Prinsep, and to a lesser extent the other members of the team, Malory was the object of a private cult, opening an exclusive window on to the real Middle Ages. All the artists, however, availed themselves of the opportunity to paint scenes featuring beautiful women, ‘stunners’ in their private argot, one of whom was Janey Burden, Morris’s future wife, and Rossetti’s future mistress. The overall decorative scheme for the chamber is not altogether clear, since the murals were never finished, but it seems likely, as Christian suggests, that, if the paintings were meant to be grouped in complementary pairs, Burne-Jones’s and Prinsep’s paintings of Nimuë under her malevolent and benevolent aspect would have formed one such pair.80

The Enchantress and the Gypsy One of the most outstanding mid-century painters of the enchantress was a latecomer to the Rossetti circle. Frederick Sandys was born in Norwich in .81 He was working as a commercial draughtsman when he made Rossetti’s acquaintance in ; he quickly became Rossetti’s house guest and a confirmed member of the Rossetti confraternity. Sandys had made an early marriage; this wife he left behind in Norwich. He later had children with a common-law wife and former actress. He also had a long-standing liaison with a Norfolk gypsy, Keomi, who appears in his work for the first time in . Sandys introduced Keomi to Rossetti, and she sat for him also.82 Other members of the circle seem to have regarded Sandys as disreputable; certainly Georgiana Burne-Jones makes no mention of him in her memoirs of her husband. It was no doubt through Rossetti that Sandys encountered Malory: like Burne-Jones, he ostentatiously assigns titles to his pictures demonstrating that his subjects are taken from Malory, not Tennyson, such as his  ‘Daughter of King Pelles Carrying the Sanct Graal’.83 For the – painting ‘Morgan le Fay’ (Plate ), Sandys used Keomi as his model, though he took some details from Mrs Fanny Eaton, a mixed-race woman with strikingly fuzzy hair.84 The picture shows Morgan completing the poisoned cloak which she will send to Arthur after the Accolon episode.

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With Morgan triumphant at the centre, the background, as Schoenherr notes, is full of the exotic bric-a-brac Sandys had in his studio. The composition is filled with a bizarre medley of exotic details: an ancient Egyptian frieze, a Hindu bronze, an embroidered robe with Pictish symbols, a pair of owls, a leopard skin, all blended into a fascinating, but convincing whole.85

The owls, and the sunrise beyond the high window suggests, as Whitaker observes, that the act of making the cloak has been a work of darkness.86 Sandys’s painting received some adverse comment at the Royal Academy, where it was exhibited in ; the Art Journal notices Sandys’s ‘Vivien’, shown in the following year, together with ‘Morgan le Fay’, in disapproving terms.87 It characterizes the two pictures as rousing ‘little short of a sensation, seek[ing] to provoke no less admiration – not to say astonishment and dismay – in an altogether anomalous production’. Morgan herself is ‘mediaeval, a petrified spasm, sensational as a ghost from a grave, and severe as a block cut from stone or wood’.88 Later more considered criticism reads the painting with greater insight. J.M. Gray, writing in , identifies ‘Morgan le Fay’, ‘Vivien’ and ‘Medea’ as Sandys’s most successful works in colour. ‘Medea’, ‘like the Morgan le Fay … is beauty distorted by passion and made ghastly by despair.’89 Reviewing Sandys’s work in , Esther Wood pays particular attention to the ‘Morgan’; her comments betray some insight into the psychology of the character as she puts the finishing touches to the death-bringing cloak. Wood sees beauty prostituted to malicious and lustful cruelty, wreaking itself indiscriminately on the innocent and on its own better nature … [T]he picture shows Morgan as a young woman, prematurely aged with passion and strife … her strong sensuous face is aglow with wild triumph; already she sees her design accomplished. The very atmosphere around her seems charged with sorcery; and the rich accessories to the room lend an unearthly glamour to the regally-clad figure in the midst.90

‘Vivien’, completed in  (Figure .), is probably also Keomi, though the eyes are blue, not the deep brown that we see in the ‘Medea’ of –. For Schoenherr, Vivien is ‘simply an icon of evil beauty’.91 But in  Gray saw more in the picture: ‘for beauty of colour and for perfect rendering of female loveliness the “Vivien” is the masterpiece of the artist’. Esther Wood, too, recognizes ‘Vivien’ as beautiful, though she clearly had no information about the social provenance of the artist’s model:

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. . Frederick Sandys, ‘Vivien’,  Vivien’s is the stately and deliberate loveliness of the cultured Englishwoman, proud perhaps, and with certain possibilities of cold cruelty, but innocent of those fierce and wanton passions which lurk in the so-called ‘child of nature’, and having withal a certain sweetness which redeems her from her studied self-regard.92

Vivien has striking, symbolic accoutrements – a faded rose, a poppy and a sprig of poisonous daphne allude to the absence of love and the presence of malice in her nature. Whitaker points out, however, that some of the attributes of Vivien, such as the peacock feathers for pride, are also symbolic of the Virgin Mary, suggesting that Sandys is playing a knowing game with the iconography of the Virgin he learned from Rossetti.93 Sandys gave up painting in oils after the furore caused by his ‘Medea’, which was refused for exhibition at the Academy in , not because of the potential sensationalism of its subject matter, but rather because among the ingredients of Medea’s magical potion are a pair of carefully realized copulating toads. The exclusion was regarded as scandalous; Swinburne leapt to Sandys’s defence, but it seems likely that Sandys, always short of money, could not now

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attract patrons who could afford the prices he would have needed to charge for big canvasses.94 Most of his post- work is restricted to drawings and watercolours; he also took up his father’s old profession of portrait painter.95

Burne-Jones and his Nimuë William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones met at Oxford, where they formed a firm and lifelong friendship. By  they had become devotees of medievalism, reading Chaucer and anything about the Middle Ages they could lay hold of. Burne-Jones discovered Malory in a Birmingham bookshop in . His wife records: It was Southey’s reprint of Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, and sometimes I think that the book can never have been loved as it was by those two men. With Edward it became literally a part of himself. Burne-Jones himself says, ‘I remember I could not buy the precious book … I used to read it a bookseller’s shop day after day … but Morris got it at once and we feasted on it long.96

Carole Silver suggests that Burne-Jones, Rossetti and Morris took more from Southey than just the plot of Malory. Though Burne-Jones and Morris were conventional young men of the mid-century, unlike the worldly and rackety Rossetti, they found in Southey’s introduction a defence of the morality of fin’amors which was to shape not only their thinking about enchantresses, but – especially for Burne-Jones – their relationships with women.97 In  Burne-Jones tracked down Rossetti in London and ‘had my first fearful talk with him’.98 Once the Oxford Union mural project started, Burne-Jones volunteered for the Merlin and Nimuë commission. This was the beginning of a lifelong obsession with the theme – ‘his personal Arthurian myth’, notes Whitaker.99 Burne-Jones’s first treatment of Merlin and Nimuë shows her, as noted above, working magic by music; she is ‘gentle and pensive’, not seductive or malicious. Burne-Jones kept returning to Nimuë, painting her again in , ,  and . The  watercolour of Merlin and Nimuë strongly shows the Italianate influence of Rossetti. The figures are distant from one another, both spatially and emotionally. The tomb in which Merlin will be enclosed is in the foreground, with a serpent lurking on its edge. A little dog, symbolic of sexual desire, tugs at Merlin’s gown, while Nimuë, consulting her book of spells in the foreground, gives him a sly sideways look; Merlin’s vulnerable

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. . Edward Burne-Jones, ‘The Beguiling of Merlin’, 

heart is figured as a pincushion, stuck with pins. Burne-Jones makes a point of inscribing a modified quotation from Malory on the inside of the frame, deliberately distancing himself from the Tennysonian and Estoire scenes. For the great ‘Beguiling of Merlin’ painted between  and , BurneJones used the head of the Greek sculptress Mary Zambaco, whom he had met in  and with whom he had a stormy affair, at one point contemplating leaving his wife.100 The model for Merlin was the American artist and journalist William Stillman, whose unusual, lean, hollow-eyed face was the result of being struck by falling snow as a child. Merlin’s eyes are already drooping, and he looks anxious and haggard. The scene is as described in the Estoire

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de Merlin, but it seems as if Merlin is being engulfed by the hawthorn tree. Nimuë is creating ‘this charm/ Of woven paces and of waving hands’ mostly from the book she holds, whose riffled pages indicate the only movement in the picture. The drapery clings tightly to her figure – she forms a monumental column in the painting’s vertical axis; while Merlin lies aslant the tree trunk behind her. Her expression is – perhaps recalling Vivien’s conflict of love and remorse sketched in Southey’s introduction – not triumphant, but wistful. Burne-Jones regarded the painting as autobiographical. In , looking back on the affair, he wrote to Helen Gaskell that Nimuë was painted from the same poor traitor [Mary Zambaco] … and I was being turned into a hawthorn bush in the forest of Broceliande – every year when the hawthorn buds it is the soul of Merlin trying to live again in the world for he left so much unsaid.101

In later years Burne-Jones visited the theme twice more. In a little watercolour roundel entitled ‘Witch’s Tree’ from his personal Flower-Book (–), he depicts Merlin – a self-portrait of the artist – sleeping peacefully among the hawthorn blossoms. Nimuë gazes gently at him, playing the lute from the Oxford Union mural. The book is now laid aside; she has achieved her aim of removing Merlin from the world into her private sphere of peace and comfort.102 Another watercolour from  shows Nimuë’s face averted as looks back at the distant figure of Merlin standing by a lake. Her clothes are simple, and she holds a box, rather than an instrument or book of magic.103 The picture is the most enigmatic among Burne-Jones’s treatments of Nimuë. In  Burne-Jones began the enormous canvas ‘Arthur in Avalon’, which he worked on up to the day he died.104 Here Morgan and her sisters wear the sad, tender look typical of Burne-Jones’s enchantresses; they nurture the weary, injured king. Penelope Fitzgerald records Burne-Jones as declaring, ‘there are only two kinds of women, … those who take the strength out of a man and those who put it back, but the destructive ones are outside blame, since they are acting only in accordance with their natures’.105 Burne-Jones’s personal engagement with the enchantress passes through the apprentice paintings which reflect his imaginative excitement in encountering Malory, his masterpiece born out of the agony of the affair with Mary Zambaco, and his search for emotional understanding from younger women – that the Nimuë of the ‘Witch’s’ Tree’ is his daughter, Margaret, is no accident.106 Finally, in ‘Arthur in Avalon’ the women of Burne-Jones’s life unite in forgiveness and

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calm tenderness around the bed of the stricken king, replacing the strength that their destructive sisters had drained from him.

Vivien’s Popularization Burne-Jones and Morris had prided themselves on their elite knowledge of the Arthurian story, making clear where they could that they worked from Malory rather than from Tennyson. The team’s Arthurian paintings in the Oxford Union were not uniformly well received. An anonymous reviewer in Building News, reacting, it seems, to Patmore’s enthusiastic account in the Saturday Review cited earlier, rather than to a personal inspection, decried the entire project as ‘a quip and crank of the mysticists’. His main objection is to the obscurity of the frescoes’ subject: ‘it cannot be considered a subject so acclimated as to be popularly accepted, but as exotic even among scholars’, he complains, arguing that in two hundred years the work would be of academic interest only to the ‘scholars who understand them and ladies who do not’.107 Alas, the frescoes became virtually invisible long before then. Writing some eighteen months before the publication of the first four Idylls, the Building News reviewer could not foresee that the obscure Arthurian characters would become household names by the end of the decade. Thanks to the enormous popularity of the Idylls, and in part due to the activities of William Morris’s design and furniture company, which made medieval motifs fashionable in bourgeois London homes, Vivien, the damsel of the Lake who brings Arthur Excalibur, and the queens on the barge taking Arthur to Avalon, were soon on display in houses on both sides of the Atlantic. Around  the Glaswegian designer John Moyr Smith created a tile series illustrating Tennyson’s Idylls. It was probably inspired by the ten-book edition of the Idylls from , since it includes Image not available two scenes illustrating ‘Gareth and Lynette’, Tennyson’s latest addition. Moyr Smith’s delicate designs – ‘Vivien’ has a markedly Oriental look – were so popular as to be worth producing in three colourways.108 The very familiarity of the Idylls was an in. . John Moyr Smith, Vivien tile, c.  vitation to mockery. One of the most sustained,

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successful parodies of the Idylls must be Samuel Beeton’s The Coming K—, published in .109 In this series of poems, the hero is a certain Guelpho, a lampoon of the future Edward VII, whose identity is hinted at by the ellipsis in the title. Lustful, frivolous and credulous, Guelpho is mostly interested in women, wine, racing and the theatre. It is indeed at the Egyptian Hall, a popular site for exhibitions and spectacles in Piccadilly, that Guelpho sees the famous conjurer Herlin, and becomes obsessed with the idea of owning Herlin’s magic table, which, with rather less dignity than the Round Table, appears to balance on its rear legs. Vilien (sic), the magician’s sleazy assistant, is suborned to obtain the table for Guelpho. Thus she pursues the magician on tour to the West Country, an area famous for its associations with Arthur.110 Vilien catches up with Herlin at Bridgwater and begs him to entrust her with the secret of the table, using all her feminine wiles to cajole the secret from Herlin. The parodist compares her with the adulterated food on sale in London streets: so sweetly gleam’d her eyes with spurious tears Just as the disinfected shrimp looks red, and passes off as fresh though he is stale.111

Herlin is adamant in his refusal, but he is also strapped for cash. When he is unable to pay the rent for the hall where he is performing, a near-riot breaks out, and he has to flee the mob. Vilien advances Herlin three pounds and the cheque Guelpho has given her in exchange for the secret of the table, but the information that she receives – that it all depends on the wrist – is worse than useless: Then she exclaimed: ‘I think I have been sold;’ And shrieking out ‘O fool’!, the maiden leapt Into the ’bus and reached the station in’t.112

Herlin disappears on tour to Australia; while Guelpho and Vilien have gained the knowledge they sought, they have no idea what to do with it. The table has lost its charm. Vivien’s story was still thought – at least by some poets – to be of interest as late as the s. Ralph MacLeod Fullarton’s Merlin: A Dramatic Poem, published in , returned to French versions of the story.113 Notable in Merlin is the rehabilitation of Morgan; her role as Vivien’s rival in love recalls the competition between the two enchantresses for Merlin’s attention in the Livre d’Artus.114 Vivien is a sulky coquette, lacking the mystery and psychological depth of Tennyson’s anti-heroine. She steals Merlin from Morgan

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and finally entombs him. Morgan almost succeeds in rescuing Merlin from Vivien’s clutches in the final act, reviving him from an enchanted sleep with a crucifix. Despite her faithful regard for him, Merlin declines Morgan’s love and succumbs once more to Vivien’s blandishments. The tone of the drama is sometimes uncertain; its archaisms and attempts at grandeur sit uneasily with Vivien’s petty-bourgeois objection to the magic words ‘Hate’ and ‘Treachery’ which open and close Merlin’s tomb. ‘What horrid words! It is so like you, dear, to go and choose/ Words that no man of taste would ever use’, she chides.115 Vivien’s spell was diminishing.  saw Henry Irving’s production of King Arthur at the Lyceum.116 At Irving’s request, James Comyns Carr had worked up the play in a high Tennysonian style from an original script from W.G. Wills.117 The play starred Irving as Arthur and Ellen Terry as Guenevere; Burne-Jones designed the sets and costumes while Sir Arthur Sullivan provided the music. Vivien is entirely absent; Morgan and Mordred are the major villains. Morgan is made into Mordred’s mother in order to streamline the plot, a simplification which persists in twentieth-century versions of the story. Since Tennyson had suppressed the incestuous element in Mordred’s birth, Morgan and her son’s relation to Arthur remains uncertain. Morgan eggs on Mordred by referring to the prophecy that one born on May Day will kill Arthur, but her hatred for Arthur is undermotivated. Addressing Mordred she complains of apparent political and legal exclusion, but it is unclear how this has come about. For in thy veins an avenging poison flows, Distilled in that dark hour when Merlin’s lips Hailed Arthur as Pendragon’s rightful heir, And left me bastard.118

Morgan’s female intuition allows her to guess the secret of Lancelot and Guenevere’s attraction before they themselves know their own hearts, ‘Trust me: ’tis true – a woman hath no wiles/ To hide her secret from a woman’s gaze’, she assures Mordred.119 Burne-Jones did not like the script, and particularly disapproved of the villains; ‘Morgan le Fay is simply dreadful; she is half divine in the ancient legend – as Merlin is – here they are scandalmongering gossips’, he complained.120 The play met a mixed critical reception. The Times reviewer noted that it kept ‘a vast audience enthralled … for a space of four hours’, and noted, as did other reviewers, both enthusiastic and hostile, that Comyns Carr’s decision to concentrate on the love triangle aligned the play

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with ‘the modern French drama of conjugal infidelity’. Morgan and Mordred, and still more Merlin, ‘a worn gray figure whose function is the utterance of obscure prophecies’, are diminished as a consequence.121 The Daily Telegraph critic Clement Scott sympathetically recognized that no production could have satisfied all comers; ‘the poets, the sentimentalists and the aesthetes pestered poor Mr Irving … some would have been too medieval, some too diffuse, some demanded Vivien, others insisted on Elaine.’122 George Bernard Shaw, as might be expected, was sarcastic about the quality of the verse, complaining that poor Ellen Terry had to produce ‘arid sham-feminine twaddle in blank verse’ when she could have been performing Ibsen.123 Summing up the year in the theatre, The Times noted that King Arthur had ‘failed to become the subject of such a “boom” as Trilby’. Beerbohm Tree’s  production of Trilby, based on Gerald du Maurier’s  serial novel – the work which invented the wicked mesmerist Svengali – had been a huge success on both sides of the Atlantic.124 As Jennifer Goodman remarks, if the Oxford frescoes had inaugurated Arthurian spectacle in Victorian England, King Arthur marks its passing. The new century would indeed find Ibsen and Svengali much more to its taste than the outmoded medievalism of Tennyson and his followers. Burne-Jones noted the historic specificity of the regard in which he and his old friends had always held the Arthurian legend. ‘To care as I care and as  or  others care one must have been born in the lull of things between the death of Keats and the first poems of Tennyson’, he wrote to Helen Gaskell in March .125 The final late legacy of the Beguiling of Merlin did not see the light of day until , and its premiere came only in .126 Isaac Albéniz’s opera Merlin was composed in  but left incomplete in manuscript. The score is highly Wagnerian in its use of leitmotif, while the libretto, written in English by Francis Money Coutts in , was part of a projected trilogy intended to be the equivalent of Wagner’s Ring cycle, that dream of an English national opera which would be the Holy Grail of the early twentieth century.127 Money Coutts’s libretto is by no means a neglected masterpiece. Brewer notes its ‘absurdly operatic style, at time reminiscent of pantomime’; Jacinto Torres characterizes it rightly as ‘an obscure and … thankless text, plagued by artificial archaisms and dangerously rigid and reiterative in its versification’.128 The opera begins with Merlin outside St Paul’s church on the day that Arthur is to draw the sword from the stone. Nivian is a Saracen slave girl; she and her sisters have seduced the gnomes so that Merlin can steal their gold. The girls’ reward is to be their freedom, but Merlin refuses to grant it. Morgan le

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Fay claims the throne for her son Mordred, but he is unable to pull out the sword. Act  sees an alliance developing between Morgan and Nivian, after Morgan and Mordred’s revolt against Arthur has ended in failure. Morgan wishes to end Merlin’s protection of Arthur, which would forward Mordred’s plans; Nivian still craves her freedom. Morgan tells her that Merlin’s wand – an objectification of the spell of enclosing – can be used to imprison the sage, still greedy for gold, in the gnomes’ cave. In Act  Nivian and her sisters, on Merlin’s orders, entice the gnomes out of their cave so that Merlin can raid their hoard. Nivian dances seductively for Merlin, asking to hold his wand while he enters the cave. Once he is within, with Morgan’s encouragement, she magically seals the entrance. Having achieved her freedom, Nivian does not know what to do with it. Casting away the wand and clinging for a moment to Morgan, she disappears into the forest. Morgan is left with the opera’s final lines. Innocent Nivian has achieved what her cunning could not: Toils that we weave so well, Weave with elaborate travail, Hands of a child unravel! So be it, Princess of Hell!

Money-Coutts’s plot brings the two chief Arthurian enchantresses together in an alliance against the masculine: the political strength of Arthur and the wisdom and fallibility of Merlin. Morgan conforms to the stereotype of the controlling mother, ambitious for her son in a way that is foreign to the medieval texts, but familiar from other s’ treatments of the two conspirators. Nivian embodies the New Woman of the late Victorian era, eager for emancipation – if not quite sure what she will do with it – strongly aware of her own sexual power and underestimated by those who try to use her. Merlin has become an oppressive patriarch; yet the Madrid premiere production, where he was sung by David Wilson-Johnson, imbued him with dignity and a flawed nobility, recalling Wagner’s characterization of Wotan.129 Vivien draws her power primarily from mid-Victorian stereotypes of women. She is less of a threat to social stability than the unfaithful wife within the home whom Tennyson embodied in Guenevere, but, as Tennyson depicted her, for contemporary readers and critics she lacked sympathetic features. With hindsight, we recognize some of the specific fears that Tennyson’s enchantress provoked; she triggers anxieties about sexual mores – in particular, prostitution – and the consequences of women’s education and emancipation. Sandys

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and Burne-Jones made enchantresses a staple of their art, anticipating the more sexually provocative femmes fatales of the s. The painters’ enchantress was often less malign than her literary counterpart; she is wistfully aware of her power to seduce and destroy her victim. The psychological truth which medieval authors recognized in the Merlin–Nimuë relationship took on a new form in Burne-Jones’s imagination; he and his fellow artists seized on the ambivalences of Southey’s summary of the Estoire story, rather than on the straightforward defences of virginity found in other sources. Even so, Nimuë cannot offer Merlin a loving, freely chosen relationship. Once she has him, she destroys him, an outcome which speaks to the deepest male fears about women’s power over themselves and others. Yet if the enchantress’s seduction entails her victim’s destruction, it is a consequence of larger forces than her own will; when not contorted by rage, her features reflect a profound sorrow, even though she will survive and her victim may not. By the end of the century Vivien–Nimuë had exhausted her potential as a focus for exploring the social and psychological complexities of women; nevertheless she remains a central, if multifaceted, symbol for later thinking about the Victorians. In A.S. Byatt’s  novel Possession, while Christabel Lamotte’s ‘grand Fairy Topic’ is the story of another enchantress, Melusine, Christabel’s companion Blanche reads the passion between Randolph Ash and Lamotte in terms of the Merlin–Nimuë story, and her painting of the subject is her legacy, her most successful work. The Vivien theme forms an important thread throughout the novel, though Byatt and her characters refuse to limit or foreclose its meanings.130 So closely was Vivien associated with the Victorian era and its passing that the new century would need a new figure for the modern exploration of the enchantress role. In fact it found two: Morgan and her sister Morgause, powerful women who, in carving their paths through the tangles of family and political intrigues, prove to be the most compelling figures of twentieth-century Arthurian reimaginings.

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Morgan, Morgause and the Modern Age

T

  which were to shape the re-envisioning of the enchantresses in the twentieth century were largely products of the last decades of the nineteenth century. In the very year that Irving’s King Arthur was premiering in London, Louis Lumière in Paris invented the portable movie camera, pioneering the technology that would make possible the memorable – and not so memorable – film retellings of Arthurian legend. Two years later Freud began the process of self-analysis which would lead to his formulation of such key psychoanalytic concepts as the unconscious, the Oedipal triangle, and the primal scene. In  the Swiss scholar Johann Bachofen published Das Mutterrecht (Mother-Right), which argued that the earliest stages of human history were both matriarchal and Goddess-worshipping. That the Goddess and her matriarchal social organization should be superseded by patriarchy, and ultimately Christianity, was for Bachofen a necessary stage in human progress, an assumption which has been under challenge from atheists and neopagans in the twentieth century. Historical and archaeological study of early Britain began to displace the Arthurian era from the Malorian world of armoured knights and courtly ladies back to the Dark Ages of the late fifth century, the collapse of order with the departure of the Roman legions and the coming of the Saxon barbarians. This new historicization substantially altered the visualization of the Arthurian reign in fiction and film alike; Jerry Bruckheimer’s King Arthur film () eschews plate armour and flowing robes for Guenevere painted with woad and wearing a kind of leather bikini.1

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These three changing or emerging disciplines – the history of religion, cinema and psychoanalysis – provide a helpful analytical framework for making sense of the multitudinous treatments of Arthurian figures in the twentieth century. Hundreds of Arthurian-themed novels have appeared in Europe and North America since ; the sheer volume of dramas, poems, short stories, operas and films in European languages alone makes a survey impossible.2 This chapter will examine in detail a range of presentations of Morgan, Vivien–Nimuë, the Lady of the Lake and Morgause in some modern novels, films and musicals, while the last section examines Morgan’s emergence as a divine figure in New Age religion.

Mark Twain and Modernity The first truly modern treatment of the Arthurian story is not a product of the twentieth century at all: Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court was published in .3 Twain’s satirical comparison of Arthur’s sixth-century civilization with the technologically advanced and go-getting esprit of the late nineteenth century does not always favour the modern period. The novel’s hero, the pragmatic and unimaginative Yankee of the title, is transported back in time to Arthur’s court, where he casts an unforgiving eye over medieval custom, technology and law.4 The Yankee’s name is Hank Morgan, apparently a good New England name, but the fact that he shares his surname with the Arthurian world’s principal female enchanter suggests, at least from the moment that he encounters his namesake, that his innovations in the world of Camelot may not always be for the best.5 Much of Twain’s humour in A Connecticut Yankee pokes cheerful fun at the ineffectual pretensions of Merlin and the elaborate rituals of knightliness. Yet Twain is also exercised by the human iniquities of the feudal system, a society which he often compares with pre-Revolutionary France, and, by implication, with the antebellum American South of his own lifetime. Hank’s visit to Morgan’s castle exemplifies the farcical view of medieval life that the time traveller’s perspective affords, contrasting the universal comedy of human relations in the henpecked expression of Morgan’s husband with the sympathetic, even sentimental, indignation which protagonist and author feel for the victims of Morgan’s ancien régime. Hank believes Morgan’s magic powers to be as illusory as Merlin’s, part of a campaign to keep her subjects in fear. Nevertheless, he is rather taken with Mrs le Fay, as he calls her, despite her reputation for

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wickedness: ‘To my surprise she was beautiful; black thoughts had failed to make her expression repulsive, age had failed to wrinkle her satin skin or mar its bloomy freshness.’6 Twain’s illustrator renders the lady as rather more matronly than Hank suggests, but she is very self-possessed; her magical powers are suggested by the aura above her throne, and their sinister side by the snarling beasts – boars or Image not available dragons – which decorate its arms. Morgan talks away at the Yankee, pausing only to stab a young page who trips while serving her. The Yankee notes approvingly that even as the queen continues her conversation, she keeps a housewifely eye on those who are . . ‘Mrs le Fay’: cleaning up the blood: ‘she indicated a crimson illustration by Daniel Beard for A CONNECTICUT YANKEE fleck the size of a tear which their duller eyes IN K ING A RTHUR’S C OURT had overlooked’.7 Hank makes the mistake of praising Arthur and is almost hauled off to the dungeons when his identity as ‘the Boss’, an even more powerful magician than Merlin, is revealed, and Morgan suddenly evinces a craven respect for him. During dinner the court musicians play execrably and the queen decides to have the composer hanged. More hints about Hank’s magical powers make her reluctant to act on her decision without his permission, but Hank calls back the musicians for a reprise: ‘Then I saw that she was right, and gave her permission to hang the whole band. This little relaxation of sternness had a good effect on the queen.’8 Though the two Morgans are allied in ruthlessness here, the queen takes Hank on an inspection of her torture chambers, where he saves the life of a poacher whose torments are witnessed by his wife and child. The man refuses to confess in order to save his family from destitution; if he were convicted their possessions would be confiscated. Shocked by the injustice of the system, but also by the waste of resources which torturing a man to death represents, Hank has the poacher and his family sent for rehabilitation in his colony, where peasants are transformed into useful workers in the new industrial economy. Hank is glad to get away from ‘the moral and physical stenches of that intolerable old buzzard roost’, but he also admits a grudging respect for Morgan’s mind: ‘No, confound her, her intellect was good,

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she had brains enough, but her training made her an ass’, he concludes, though he also regards her as a force of Nature, and thus not susceptible to his reforming ideas; ‘the queen was the only power there. And she was a Vesuvius.’9 Morgan’s cruelty is, as the Yankee recognizes, mostly socialized into her; she acts with generosity by her standards when she decides to pay compensation for the page she killed, and Hank gives her credit for that. Morgan is ignorant, unimaginative and used to the casual exercise of power over life and death, yet she ultimately does less harm than her namesake. Though she wrecks lives and kills on a whim, her crimes pale in comparison to the wholesale mechanized slaughter of Arthur’s knights which Hank brings about; in the name of progress the flower of chivalry is electrocuted by electric fencing and mown down with Gatling guns. Twain’s savage ending is devoid of comedy, unless it resides in the grim irony which condemns the Yankee’s cohorts to a lingering death from disease, unable to escape the encircling corpses of their enemies. Merlin, the representative of the occult powers that Hank had scorned, has the last laugh, magicking the Yankee back to his own time, to Warwick, where he is able to give the novel’s narrator the manuscript which relates his adventures in the past. As Beverly Taylor notes, ‘despite the humanity that the Boss exhibits throughout the narrative, his scientific resourcefulness should finally be seen in the same context as the machinations of the evil magician’.10

Freud and the Enchantress Among modern Arthurian literary figures, Twain’s Yankee shows the fewest symptoms of psychological reflection about his own personality and emotional life. After Ernest Jones brought psychoanalysis back to Britain from Vienna in , the year in which the first English translation of The Interpretation of Dreams appeared, Arthurian characters, like those in other novels, were increasingly conceived in psychoanalytic terms. Among those who underwent analysis in the s was the young Terence Hanbury White, a gifted teacher and aspiring author, then a master at Stowe School. White had had a difficult childhood; his parents’ marriage was unhappy and, to the boy’s chagrin, the details of their divorce case were widely reported in the newspapers. In October  White wrote to his former Cambridge tutor L.J. Potts that he was being psychoanalysed; a later letter makes clear that he hoped to rid himself of sadistic and homosexual tendencies.11 White was never to find

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sexual contentment; but his exposure to Freudian ideas powerfully affected his treatment of the enchantresses in the successive versions of The Once and Future King. Giving White’s tetralogy precedence in this chapter needs no apology; Elisabeth Brewer, who has written the most important literary study of White’s Arthuriad, indicates its centrality: ‘dated, argumentative and sometimes silly, … it will probably remain the most readable and the best known of Arthurian fictions published in the second half of this century’.12 Mary Stewart, John Boorman, Mike Barr and Brian Bolland, all discussed below, openly acknowledge their debt to White. The Sword in the Stone () is a whimsical account of the childhood and education of a boy who at the end of the book is revealed to be Arthur.13 White took advantage of Malory’s silence about Arthur’s youth to invent an idyllic boyhood spent with his loving foster-father, and foster-brother Kay, in the Castle of the Forest Sauvage. Arthur, or the Wart, as he is nicknamed, gains Merlin as his tutor, undergoes a series of transformations into animals, birds and fish, which expand his sympathy for the natural world, teaching him valuable lessons about various features of human society, anthropomorphically ascribed to the beasts he encounters. Merlin’s magical skills are subordinated to his educational aims; Wart’s education is, as Brewer notes, impressively child-centred and sympathetic.14 As a contrast to the kindly Merlin, White creates an enchantress, Madame Mim, into whose cottage Wart and Kay are enticed in one of their forays into the Forest Sauvage. Although she is based on the hideous cannibal witch of the Grimm Brothers’ ‘Hansel and Gretel’, Madame Mim is deceptively attractive: She was a strikingly beautiful woman of about thirty, with coal-black hair so rich that it had the blue-black of the maggot-pies in it, silky bright eyes and a general soft air of butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth – she was sly.15

Madame Mim inveigles the boys into her cottage by implying they are too snobbish to visit a humble cottage-dweller, but once inside they are flung into hutches and threatened with dismemberment and with being devoured. White’s realization of Madame Mim teeters uneasily between comedy – she sings a series of songs which range from a stream-of-consciousness recipe for cooking boys to a parody of ‘My Love is like a Red, Red Rose’ – and horror; there’s gratuitous sadism in her intention to skin the Wart alive. Merlin rescues his pupils from a fate which has mildly sexualized overtones’ ‘the dreadful witch now lifted the Wart up into the air and prepared to have her will of him’.16

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The two enchanters face each other in a magic duel in which they rapidly change forms until one gains a fatal advantage over the other. Comedy and right triumph; Mim’s final form is a giant extinct elephant-like creature, the aullay. ‘The aullay got hiccoughs, turned red, swelled visibly, began whooping, came out in spots, staggered three times, rolled its eyes, fell rumbling to the ground.’17 Merlin has ingeniously turned himself into the microbes which cause the aullay’s symptoms, ‘and from a complication of all these complaints the infamous Madame Mim had immediately expired’.18 When White came to revise The Sword in the Stone for its publication with the three succeeding novels, as The Once and Future King in , he excised Madame Mim, but she has an afterlife in the Disney animated film of The Sword in the Stone. Loosely derived from the first edition of The Sword in the Stone, the film was released in .19 Madame Mim is not the slinky seductress of White’s imagination, but a stout, buck-toothed, purple-haired and menopausal hag who can temporarily assume a beautiful appearance.20 Mim characterizes herself in song as ‘the magnificent, marvellous, mad Madame Mim’, but she remains an essentially unthreatening character, considerably less frightening than the pike who almost snaps Wart up when Merlin transforms him into a perch. Merlin and Mim run the gamut of magical transformations from alligator to walrus; as in White’s text, Merlin worsts her by turning himself into a germ, but Mim retires to bed with an outbreak of lurid spots, rather than expiring.21 The coal-black-haired, silky-eyed lady whose instincts were to imprison and devour small boys was a prototype for White’s fullest engagement with his childhood trauma, in his characterization of Morgause of Orkney. His encounter with psychoanalysis had suggested to White that it was not the stigma of incest attendant on Mordred’s birth which drove the son to destroy the father, even if signs of an Oedipal obsession on Mordred’s part emerge in The Candle in the Wind, the tetralogy’s concluding novel. For White it was clear that Mordred’s mother was to blame for the final catastrophe. In The Witch in the Wood (), his first sequel to The Sword in the Stone, he paints a cruel portrait of Morgause, produced both by the misogyny to which his writing is always prone, and by the unresolved anguish of the young White as victim. This Morgause is a witch, though not as accomplished as her sister Morgan; her essential superficiality means that she only uses spells for cosmetic purposes. White obsessively analyses Morgause, both from an apparently objective narratorial perspective – ‘perhaps a modern psychologist would have explained

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her by saying that she lived in an imaginary world’ – and through interior monologues which reveal her self-obsession and delusions.22 Morgause has no intellectual capacities; she relates to the outside world through feeling, striking dramatic attitudes of maternal self-sacrifice or embarrassing flirtatiousness. White is disgusted both by Morgause’s sexuality and by her femininity: she is twice shown bathing in a vile concoction of blood and filth; ‘her eyebrows and eyelashes were lying on a stool beside the bath with some tweezers for plucking her moustache’, he cruelly notes.23 In her vicious spats with her ineffectual husband Lot, exchanging insults in public (‘Fat Boy! ‘Trollop!’), we hear White’s memories of the breakdown of his parents’ marriage.24 Morgause’s treatment of her children is perhaps hardest to read. Alternately smothering them with self-regarding Mother Love (as White calls it) or ignoring them, she shapes an emotionally confused brood of children, and – somehow – Gareth, ‘who was a dear’. White is clear about her lack of selfawareness, ‘Queen Morgause was a witch of parts: but she was not conscious of it … nor had she any idea that she was making her children unhappy, and she frankly believed that there were few people as good and kind as herself.’25 The most disturbing scene in The Witch in the Wood is not the boys’ hideous butchery of the unicorn, a powerful scene which survives in the book’s rewriting as The Queen of Air and Darkness, but her reaction to the failure of her Ice Tournament, a farcical affair at which her sons and the visitor-knights, Pellinor, Palomides and Grummore, enter into a spirit of carnival, and the villagers have a splendid time, but which ends with Morgause and others falling through the ice. That evening Queen Morgause beat all four of her sons with the leg of a stool. She stripped them naked and hit at them indiscriminately, almost frothing at the mouth … It was the grinding of her own teeth which frightened Agravaine more than anything.26

Morgause is transformed into a madwoman, but the detail here – the brutal instrument, the naked vulnerability of the boys – betrays White’s own sexualized interest in the scene’s sadism. He is present in the text both as the boy who is beaten and the one who beats. With his particular sexual pathology, White is likely to have known Freud’s influential essay of , ‘A Child is Being Beaten’, in which Freud characterises the fantasy of ‘my father is beating a boy whom I hate’; his substitution of the out-of-control mother for the father is highly suggestive.27 The power of the child’s love for his mother, however

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manipulative she may be, is acknowledged in Morgause’s successful seduction of her half-brother: ‘It is impossible to explain how these things happen … perhaps it was because he had never know a mother of his own, so that the role of mother love took him between wind and water.’28 The Witch in the Wood was far less successful in artistic terms than The Sword in the Stone, a failure which White and his friends put down to Morgause. ‘She is too much exposed in her vulgarity – it sickens one’, warned Potts.29 When White revised the two early novels for the publication of the complete tetralogy, the enchantress figures were reconceived. The Madame Mim episode was replaced by an adventure in which Wart and Kay, with the aid of Robin Hood and Maid Marian, rescue the castle’s Dog-Boy, Friar Tuck and an old man from the clutches of Morgan le Fay.30 White had decided to eliminate the non-medieval characters from his first book; to motivate the boys’ rescue adventure, he introduces the fairy habit of abducting those who fail to observe verbal taboos, a belief he had encountered during his wartime exile in Ireland. Morgan’s exact status, as we saw in the Introduction, is disputed by Robin and Marian. Robin maintains that she is the Queen of the Fairies, a race he identifies with the Sidhe of Irish legend, the oldest inhabitants of the land, while Marian asserts that Morgan is human, an enchantress, ‘a necromancer’ – White uses Malory’s term – who is allied with the fairies.31 Morgan is discovered in her Castle Chariot, here a fortress made of pork products borrowed from an Irish vision of the Other World, rather than the noble castle of French tradition. She reclines on a bed of lard, ‘a fat, dowdy, middle-aged woman with black hair and a slight moustache, but she was made of human flesh’.32 Nevertheless Morgan shares the general fairy aversion to iron, and makes no resistance as the prisoners are rescued; the only real peril that the boys face is her griffin, whom Kay shoots.33 Morgan appears briefly in The Ill-made Knight, White’s version of the Lancelot, in the company of her three fellow queens, abducting Lancelot and forcing him to choose one of them as his mistress. More politely than in Malory and the Lancelot, the knight naturally declines: ‘I certainly will not have any of you for my mistress. I am sorry if this is discourteous, but it is all I can say.’ The queens curtsy ‘with frigid dignity’ and make their exit.34 That, since White ends The Once and Future King before the final battle, is the last we hear of Morgan. Morgause still retains some of her terrible fascination in the new version of the second novel, The Queen of Air and Darkness, though most of the disturbing comedy, the embarrassing rows with Lot, and much of the unsuccessful flirting

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with the visiting knights have gone. She has a stronger interest in magic; the book opens with a horrible scene in which she boils a cat alive in pursuit of a spell which confers invisibility, but she loses interest in the project before the magic cat-bone can be identified.35 White hints that she uses magic in her seduction of Arthur too. By cutting out the interior monologues and much of the posturing and self-dramatizing, White sharpens our perception of Morgause by showing her largely through the eyes of her sons, who all adore her uncritically. He had already worked out the differing psychological effects which her engulfing love and unthinking neglect would have on the children; the unicorn hunt in which Meg the kitchen maid entices the beautiful unicorn out of the forest, only for Agravaine to butcher it because the beast lays its head on the lap of the girl substituting for his mother, brilliantly anticipates Agravaine’s later murder of his mother for her affair with Lamerok. More importantly, the type of mothering Morgause gives her four eldest sons explains the perverse nature of her youngest. White’s Mordred labours under a number of disadvantages; he is albino, slightly hunchbacked, and therefore no good at the physical feats of knightliness. Mordred himself continually alludes to Arthur’s attempt to drown the May Day babies as sufficient explanation for his hostility to his father, but Arthur himself – and, more insistently, White’s narratorial voice – are clear that his warped psychology is Morgause’s fault: ‘She had loved and forgotten him by turns, an insatiable carnivore who lived on the affections of her dogs, her children and her lovers.’36 When Mordred is clearly on the verge of madness, White explains that Mordred has somehow become Morgause: ‘Now that she was dead, he had become her grave. She existed in him like the vampire. When he moved, … he did it with her movement.’37 Though, as Elisabeth Brewer observes, Morgause is characterized as having an essentially trivial nature, neither ‘wildly seductive’, as White claims his revision would make her, nor ‘frighteningly evil’, she is granted enormous explanatory power.38 White’s understanding of Freud’s Oedipal triangle is refracted through his own childhood; that Mordred turns out unattractive, too clever for his own good, sexually ambiguous and cruel, is largely his mother’s fault. White’s Freudian rewriting of Morgause influenced other treatments of the character. In Mary Stewart’s important four-novel retelling of the stories of Merlin and Arthur, The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, The Last Enchantment, and the final book, which recounts the life of Mordred, The Wicked Day, Morgause is introduced just before the end of The Hollow Hills.39 Arthur is about to be recognized by – and to learn his parentage from – Uther when, exultant after

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winning a battle against the Saxons, he is invited to Morgause’s bed. This Morgause is Uther’s illegitimate daughter by a Breton woman, interested in magic, with some degree of second sight and knowledge of herbs. Usually accompanied by a faint, sometimes queasy, scent of apricots and honeysuckle, she deliberately seduces Arthur, though what she hopes to gain from the action is not entirely clear.40 Barred from court by Merlin, Morgause, already Lot’s mistress, succeeds in marrying him. When Mordred is born, Morgause weaves a complicated plot to ensure that Lot, jealous that he is not the father, murders a substitute baby. Morgause also instigates – for no very good reason – the massacre of boy-children, making sure that her son is safely hidden with poor fisher-folk, against the day when she will use him to try to establish her influence over Arthur. For good measure she poisons Merlin, inducing in him the fits of madness which are part of northern British traditions of Myrddin or Lailoken, the wild man of the forest.41 Merlin recovers, but is never quite the same, prone to cataleptic fits which lead to his eventually being immured alive in the crystal cave of his hermitage.42 In The Wicked Day Stewart succeeds remarkably in rehabilitating Mordred. Though he has his mother’s calculating character and some of her passion, he is fundamentally loyal, decent and pragmatic. He returns to live with his younger half-brothers, near the beginning of the novel, always mistrusting Morgause and her motives, resisting her attempts to charm, even, in one disturbing scene, to seduce him, and forming a clear-sighted assessment of his brothers’ characters.43 Morgause’s deception of Arthur and, more crucially, her attack on Merlin have ended any chance of reconciliation and she is confined to the convent at Almesbury. Stewart follows the medieval sources in making Gaheris his mother’s killer; though there is no equivalent scene to White’s unicorn hunt, Gaheris has a similar mother-fixation. The murder is delineated in some detail: Morgause is pretending to be on her deathbed, in order to secure an interview with Arthur in which she hopes to plead for her freedom. Since she does not expect the king until the next day, she is entertaining Lamorak in bed when Gaheris, who has heard the rumour of his mother’s imminent death, bursts in, closely followed by Mordred, who has anticipated his half-brother’s reaction. Stewart’s eye is as merciless as Gaheris’s sword, Lamorak … flung himself off the woman’s body … the move left her exposed to the merciless starlight; the sprawled flesh, the marks of love, the gaping mouth, the hands still weaving in air over the space where her lover’s body had been.44

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Stewart deftly incorporates an allusion to Tennyson’s Vivien’s ‘woven paces and waving hands’. Gaheris half-severs his mother’s head with a single blow, followed by a frenzied attack. Mordred keeps his self-control, swiftly arranging for Lamorak to get away safely and for Gaheris to escape before Arthur can punish him. Mordred does not mourn his mother: he is the only one of her sons who sees her clearly; ‘in death, as in life, she will wreck the peace of all near her’, he observes.45 These two modern versions of Morgause are both substantially shaped by a Freudian understanding of mother–son relations, and by a recognition that women’s limited access to power leads them to seek it in other ways, through psychological manipulation, and, in the case of White’s queen, through a continual aggrieved recollection of ancient injustices done to the house of Cornwall which she parades before her sons. Since Stewart is not anxious about upsetting youthful readers and their parents, her Morgause is very much more ‘wildly seductive’ and sexually voracious than White’s. She has no redeeming features and none of the complex psychology imagined and then excised from White’s portrait. Beautiful and bad, she is in search only of short-term power and advantage. As White had seen, if Morgause occupies the central female roles of enchantress and evil mother, the narrative can easily dispense with Morgan. Stewart’s Morgan doubles Morgause – Merlin reckons that Arthur’s younger sister is a more powerful enchantress than her half-sister, but she is largely kept out of the story. Morgan and Accolon’s plot against Arthur is retained in The Wicked Day, but related at second-hand, a tale bandied at her husband Urbgen’s court to explain her failure to appear in public when Morgause and her sons visit. Stewart has difficulty in motivating Morgan’s break with her brother and courtly life: What the queen intended was never satisfactorily explained. She cannot have thought that young Accolon, even with Urbgen out of the way, the Sword of Britain in his hand, and Morgan married to him, could ever have been able to supplant Arthur as High King.46

Though Stewart hints in her afterword to The Hollow Hills that Morgan will retreat to a religious house, returning with her nuns to fetch Arthur after the last battle, in the event it is Nimuë, Merlin’s lover and eventual successor, who takes the king away, perhaps to be healed, to the home she shared with Merlin, Applegarth, the name of which nods to the tradition of Avalon as the Isle of Apples.47

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In comparison with Morgause, Stewart’s Nimuë is somewhat undercharacterized; she comes into Merlin’s life because he mistakes her for a boy, Ninian, for whom he had felt a strong erotic and intellectual attraction, but who had died before becoming his pupil. Nimuë cross-dresses in order to maintain the deception; her androgynous appeal to Merlin’s homoerotic streak is clear to the old enchanter, much as he tries to suppress it, but when Arthur reveals her true sex Nimuë and Merlin become lovers. Stewart does not seem to be familiar with the Merlin tradition which permits Merlin and Vivien a loving relationship, but decided independently that her Merlin would not be fooled by a wicked and scheming temptress.48 Nimuë accidentally entombs her teacher-lover alive, believing that Morgause’s poison has finally proved fatal. Once Merlin returns from the dead, their relationship is over; Nimuë is happily married. Unlike her medieval predecessors, Nimuë takes over Merlin’s role of counsellor to Arthur, as well as continuing her study of magic and herbs. She is anxious to acquire Merlin’s power and knowledge, but her desire for learning seems laudable, and at least partly altruistic; Arthur’s kingdom cannot afford to lose Merlin’s expertise and Nimuë preserves and develops it. ‘At the end of the trilogy … it seems that male and female magic will be united, perhaps drawing together simultaneously, narratorial and authorial subjects’, Marion Wynne Davies suggests.49 Stewart is not particularly interested in giving her Morgause psychological realism or clear motivation; some version of Freud’s sibling rivalry seems sufficient to account for her plotting against her brother. Sibling rivalry is frequent in later retellings; it motivates the ripe villainy of Morgan in Mike Barr and Brian Bolland’s Camelot , a DC Comics maxi-series which appeared between  and .50 Morgan claims that her hostility – which extends to the destruction of the entire planet – stems from the family drama: ‘From the moment he was born I hated him … for his father killed mine, and forced himself on my mother. I vowed to slay him … and to that end, dedicated myself to the Dark Arts and their Mastery’, she explains.51 Morgan has unleashed a troop of aliens to destroy Earth; in the planet’s darkest hour Arthur rises from slumber within Glastonbury Tor and, with his reincarnated knights, rallies to defend humanity. After the failure of her plots against Arthur in her original existence, Morgan had retreated to Chiron, the undiscovered tenth planet of our solar system, where a sacred fountain both increased her magical powers and induced a hideously ulcerated skin condition, which could be cured by the

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. . Morgan le Fay from C  

Holy Grail. Once again for a woman the price of magical skill is shown to be physical repulsiveness.52 The reincarnated Mordred brings the Grail to Chiron and uses it to control the rapidly fading Morgan. Merlin is also on Chiron, having been incarcerated there by Nenyve, and it is here that the final showdown takes place.53 Arthur and his surviving knights travel to Chiron, recover the Grail and aim to destroy Morgan and Mordred in order to save the Earth. Merlin escapes from his enthralment, accelerating Morgan’s physical collapse through his magic. Their triumph is short-lived; metamorphosing into a spider–woman hybrid, Morgan summons all her alien flying force for a final attack on Earth. Arthur plunges Excalibur back into the Stone, creating a nuclear explosion, resembling a collision of matter and antimatter, Charles Wood suggests, which

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saves civilization at the cost of Arthur’s and Morgan’s lives.54 Camelot  is marvellously inventive, a fusion between Arthurian legend and science fiction, but in a dynamic graphic format and keenly engaging with s’ gender and race politics. Morgan’s unhappy childhood, the loss of her father and her jealousy of the supplanting sibling have formed her character once and for all. Manipulating all around her in her insane desire for revenge on Arthur and Merlin, her final black widow incarnation, reminiscent of the monstrous Shelob in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, makes her inner evil terrifyingly apparent.

Enchantresses on the Screen Twain’s semi-satirical view of the Arthurian past was partly produced by late-nineteenth-century America’s impatience with the nostalgia for an idealized medieval past, and the claims for imperial dominance which the mother country was promoting. Twain’s was not the first comedy treatment of the Arthurian theme; Bulwer-Lytton’s  epic King Arthur also wavers between high sentiment and outright farce.55 The downfall of the Round Table is not normally regarded as material for comedy, but other elements of the story have become susceptible to humorous treatment. T.H. White, and a general twentieth-century view of magic as superstition, was responsible for making Merlin comic; the Lady of the Lake too has tended to fare badly, especially in film representations. That her aquatic abode is only a magical disguise, keeping her protégés safe from their enemies, rather than an actual liquid habitat, is not always understood. The confusion of the Sword in the Stone, which confers kingship on Arthur, and Excalibur, the sword gained from the Lady or her damsel, underlies one of the most commented-on scenes in the  film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, now being reprised as a musical, Spamalot, on the Broadway stage.56 When Arthur (Graham Chapman) is questioned by a sceptical and democratically minded peasant, Dennis (Michael Palin), and an old woman (Terry Jones) about his claim to the throne, the king, accompanied by soaring female voices, and drawing on both Tennyson and Malory, lyrically declaims: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in purest shimmering samite, held Excalibur aloft from the bosom of the waters to signify that by Divine Providence … I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur … that is why I am your King.

Dennis shatters the transcendence of the moment:

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Look, strange women lying on their backs in ponds handing over swords … that’s no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

With typical Python hyperbolic repetition, he denounces the Lady as a ‘watery tart’ and a ‘moistened bint’.57 The de-romanticization of the Lady seems complete here, but, as Eric Idle notes in his account of the genesis of Spamalot, the absence of substantial female roles in the film was problematic for his musical comedy version. Thus the Lady of the Lake (Sara Ramirez), accompanied by her cheerleading ‘Laker Girls’, returns in a role considerably more central than that of ‘watery tart’, urging the knights on in the Grail quest, singing a number of romantic duets, including ‘a sentimental song/ that casts a magic spell’. The Lady finally steals the show; by the end of the musical she is romantically entwined with Arthur – a career first – and reveals that her true name is Guenevere.58 Since Lancelot is now gay, the future of Camelot – and of Arthur’s marital happiness – looks brighter than in any other modern version. Arthurian stories have been filmed since the very earliest days of the cinema; while directors usually emphasize battle scenes, the powerful bonds between Arthur and his knights, or the agonizing love triangle, a few film or made-for-television movies have featured Morgan and Nimuë, if not the Lady of the Lake.59 Morgan appears in some of the many film versions of A Connecticut Yankee, usually as a malign figure who falls in love with the Yankee and spends the movie vamping him, most memorably in David Butler’s  film, where she was played by Myrna Loy.60 The first Yankee from , a silent film, inspired Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s  musical comedy. The original production had a non-singing Morgan, but when A Connecticut Yankee was revived in , following the success of Oklahoma!, with Vivienne Segal as Morgan, Hart wrote for her the famous number ‘To Keep My Love Alive’.61 This depicts Morgan as a serial murderer: ‘and when I’m ill at ease/ I kill at ease/ To keep my love alive’, she confesses. Seven husbands are disposed of in order to maintain her ideal of romance.62 Morgan is central to the narrative of John Boorman’s Excalibur; her viewpoint, as Jacqueline de Weever notes, frames Arthur’s life from conception to death.63 Boorman acknowledges the formative role that White’s Once and Future King played in his conception of the Arthurian story; like White, he combines characters for the sake of narrative simplicity, fusing Morgana, as she is called here, with both Morgause and Vivien.64 Morgana is first seen as

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. . Merlin and Morgana in John Boorman’s E 

a precociously perceptive child; she senses that the magically disguised Uther, striding into her mother’s chamber and making violent love to Ygraine, is an imposter. Young Morgana witnesses through her mother’s bed-hangings the Freudian ‘primal scene’ in which her brother is conceived. At the moment of Uther’s orgasm, with preternatural knowingness, she announces that her father is dead. Horribly impaled on a phallic pike, the Duke of Cornwall indeed dies at that very moment. Morgana resents her brother’s existence, but she primarily blames Merlin (Nicol Williamson) for her father’s death and the deception practised on her mother. When Merlin comes to claim the infant Arthur, again fixing him with her disconcerting gaze, she asks ‘Are you mother and the father of the baby now, Merlin?’, signalling her understanding that Merlin has deliberately brought the child into existence.65 As an adult (played by Helen Mirren), Morgana comes to Camelot in an honoured role as the king’s sister and sets about mischief-making, prompting the drunken Gawain to accuse Guenevere of adultery. At first Merlin resists her attempts at seduction, but Morgana persuades him that she is a kindred spirit, a fellow practitioner of shape-changing and prophetic magic. Despite his mistrust, Merlin takes Morgana as both pupil and mistress. Arthur jeopardizes the potency and stability of the realm by driving Excalibur between the sleeping bodies of Lancelot and Guenevere, whom he discovers lying in post-coital embrace in the forest. The sword, Merlin exclaims, has entered ‘the spine of

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the dragon’, the hidden source of magical power and Arthur’s sovereignty; indeed Arthur’s thrust impales Merlin himself. The wizard tries to repair the damage done to world order by reciting ‘the charm of making’, the spell which invokes the dragon and which he had used to transform Uther on the night of Arthur’s conception.66 As Merlin performs the charm of making, Morgana memorizes it, using it to imprison Merlin in a cage of stalactites in the coils of the dragon deep beneath Camelot.67 Once he is enclosed, she reveals her motives: hatred of the man who destroyed her family, revenge for her mother’s deception, and lust for power, ‘You fool! You thought you would trap me! I shall find a man and give birth to a god!’ In the next scene, Morgana, disguised as Guenevere through the shapechanging power of the charm of making, makes love with Arthur, but this is simply a means to an end. At the moment of climax she reveals who she is: ‘I could kill you now, brother, but I want you to live to see our son be king.’ Mordred emerges from his mother’s body in a powerful thunderstorm, but, at the moment the incestuously conceived child is born, Arthur is struck by lightning, a debilitating blow which cripples him and turns the kingdom into a wasteland. As Mordred grows, his mother gives him magical armour which confers invulnerability. She commands the boy to entice knights to her castle, where, he pretends, they will find the Grail which will heal the sick king and the desolate land. In reality Morgana has the knights hanged; in the true necromantic tradition, she magically reanimates the dead in sinisterly clanking armour to do her will. Morgana’s death owes more to Boorman’s knowledge of Irish traditions of Oisín than to the Oedipal passions of Gaheris. The hero Oisín journeyed to Tir n’an Og, the land of eternal youth; like Ogier the Dane in Chapter , he discovered that three hundred years had passed while he was away. Breaking the taboos imposed by the Other World, Oisín reverts to his true age when he returns to Ireland and dies a shrivelled old man. On the eve of the final battle, Merlin reappears in spirit form, brought back by Arthur’s love for his mentor. Morgana has maintained her youthful beauty by magic, but when Merlin challenges her to show her superior powers by reciting once more the charm of making, she rises to his bait. Morgana calls up ‘the dragon’s breath’, a mist which confers advantage on Arthur’s side in the coming battle, but also a spell which utterly consumes her magical resources. As Merlin slips away, Mordred enters his mother’s tent to question her about the sudden fog. A wrinkled, toothless hag greets him as her darling boy. Horrified, he strikes

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at her with his sword, then throttles her. Morgana’s extraordinary beauty is revealed as a sham; she has aged unnaturally as a result of her alliance with the powers of darkness and she dies at her son’s hand. This is the last we see of her in the film; though there are four stately queens on the barge which bears Arthur away, none of them is Morgana. With her sharply intelligent features, Helen Mirren gives an impressive performance, avoiding the eccentricity and camp which unsettle Williamson’s performance as Merlin. Boorman’s ingenious combination of the enchantress roles creates a powerful, charismatic figure; as de Weever observes, ‘Morgana does not reside at the margins, but at the center.’68 Morgana’s affinities range right across medieval enchantress tradition; she shares Morgan’s envy of her brother’s power, Viviane’s desire for magical knowledge and the damoiselle cacheresse’s obsessive hatred of Merlin. The motif of entrapment of knights, ascribed to Morgan in the later medieval works, is integrated with the role of the deceptive temptresses in the Grail quest, diabolical creatures who aim to ensnare such holy knights as Bors and Perceval. Morgana is closer to the manipulative modern Morgause than to the medieval Queen of Orkney, deliberately seducing her brother in the full knowledge that she is committing incest. She is killed, like Morgause, by her son, not because of her sexuality and transgression against the honour code, but because she has aged unnaturally. Traffic with diabolical powers destroys true beauty; like the Morgan of the Prophesies Morgana diverts much of her magical energy into maintaining the illusion of youth and loveliness. Excalibur’s vision of Camelot accords with the foreboding sense in the PostVulgate Suite that Arthur’s reign falls under a sign of sexual sin. But where the Post-Vulgate, mediated through Malory to Boorman, saw the incest as the cause of the Round Table’s collapse, Excalibur traces the fall back to Arthur’s conception, ‘when Arthur is only an idea in Merlin’s mind, brought to fruition precisely to save the social order, which is nevertheless doomed by his birth’.69 The clear child’s gaze of Morgana focuses the audience’s attention on desire and the betrayals which follow from it. In Uther, Lancelot, Guenevere, Merlin and finally in Morgana herself, sexuality and destruction are inextricably linked. The most substantial roles for the Arthurian enchantresses beyond Excalibur have been in two television miniseries: Merlin, directed by Steve Barron (), and The Mists of Avalon, directed by Uli Edel (), the latter based on Marion Zimmer Bradley’s bestselling novel, discussed below. Merlin employs the whole gamut of enchantresses: Morgan (Helena Bonham Carter),

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Nimuë (Isabella Rossellini) and the non-Arthurian Mab, Queen of the Old Ways (Miranda Richardson, who also plays the Lady of the Lake). Mab has the most important enchantress role; she is the creator of Merlin (Sam Neill), his would-be tutor in evil magic and the enemy against whom he fights. Nimuë has no knowledge of magic. Merlin’s innocent beloved is hideously scarred when sacrificed to a dragon through Mab’s machinations; thoroughly Christian she withdraws to Avalon to hide her scars. Morgan’s role owes much to Boorman’s vision; as a child she witnesses Uther’s rape of her mother and with her preternatural sight recognizes him as an imposter. Born with a deformed face, Morgan defects to Mab in exchange for beauty and in hope of gaining the throne. But her only chance of power is through Mordred, seducing Arthur, who does not recognize her, before his marriage. As soon as Mordred is ready to challenge Arthur, Mab kills Morgan off. Merlin’s plot also borrows from Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon in its depiction of Mab as the leader of a doomed female pagan religion struggling to stave off the challenge of Christianity, but, unlike the women of Avalon in the earlier novel, Mab and Morgan are almost entirely evil, conscienceless, petty-minded and scheming. Even the anaemic, pious Nimuë finally succumbs to Mab’s blandishments; her dragon burns are effaced on condition she and Merlin withdraw to a peaceful existence beyond ‘the doors of magic’. When Arthur is dying, Nimuë allows Merlin to leave their retreat to oversee the restoration of Excalibur to the Lake and for a final showdown with Mab. Nimuë pays the price for Merlin’s return to the world; she is enclosed, sealed behind ‘the doors of magic’, as Merlin gallops off to business of state. Only in old age does Merlin discover that Mab’s spells have waned as the world has forgotten her; he and the elderly Nimuë are reunited. She is rewarded for her patient forbearance when Merlin uses up the last of his magic to restore them both to their youth, anticipating a happy future far away from the kingdom now ruled by a Galahad who, in possession of the Holy Grail, needs no further magical assistance. Merlin is highly derivative; large areas of the Arthurian plot are elided or altered, so that Lancelot and Guenevere ride away to a blissful future away from Camelot. Despite its frequent flights of whimsy – fluttering Victorian sprites, a comic gnome Frik (Martin Short), whose love for Morgan le Fay culminates at her death scene in ill-judged pathos, and, perhaps worst of all, a talking horse called Rupert – nevertheless Merlin offers some knowing pleasures to aficionados of the Arthurian canon.

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Morgan meets the Goddess: The Mists of Avalon In  Marion Zimmer Bradley published The Mists of Avalon, a mammoth and enormously influential retelling of the Arthurian legend, largely from the perspective of Morgan le Fay, here named Morgaine.70 Bradley yokes Arthur’s life-story to a densely imagined religious struggle between a matriarchal Goddess religion, centred on Avalon, or Glastonbury as it later becomes, and Christianity. The story is narrated in retrospect by Morgaine, but she largely resists hindsight, recounting the rise and fall of Arthur and Camelot as they occur. Morgaine has access through her ‘Sight’ to the consciousnesses of the other women in the story, primarily the enchantresses, but also at times that of Gwenhwyfar (Guenevere). Morgaine, Morgause, Viviane, and other avatars of Merlin’s lover, Nimuë and Niniane all appear as separate characters; following the increasingly popular tradition in later retellings, Morgaine becomes Mordred’s mother.71 Viviane is the Lady of the Lake, the supreme priestess of the religion of Avalon, and the dominant figure of the first part of the novel. Viviane brings her niece, the young Morgaine, to be fostered in Avalon and trained as a priestess, intending Morgaine to become her successor. But it is also vital for Viviane and her male counterpart, Taliesin – the chief Druid and Merlin of Britain (‘Merlin’ like ‘Lady of the Lake’ is a hereditary title) – that the High King should be an adherent, or at least sympathetic, to the Goddess religion. Arthur takes part in the king-making, the ordeal in which the kingly candidate kills a stag, demonstrating his worthiness to rule. The ritual culminates in a hieros gamos, a sacred marriage between the king and the representative of the Goddess, in which Viviane arranges for Morgaine to lie with her halfbrother. Horrified by Viviane’s deception, Morgaine leaves Avalon and bears Mordred at the court of her aunt, Morgause of Orkney. Morgause is politically astute and ambitious, promiscuous, but often kindly, at least in her dealings with her niece. She fosters Mordred and instils in him a desire for power, the ‘vaulting ambition’ which Viviane had early recognized in her.72 Under the influence of the pious Gwenhwyfar, Arthur makes more and more concessions to the priests, precipitating the alienation and hostility of Morgaine and of Avalon, now represented by Mordred’s lover, Niniane. She has become the new Lady of the Lake after Viviane’s murder by Balin.73 Avalon had initially supported Arthur as king, bestowing on him Excalibur and the magic scabbard. Morgaine enlists the help of her lover, and step-son,

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Accolon to recover the sword and to bring down Arthur, who has forfeited the right to the throne through his failure to prevent the destruction of places sacred to the Goddess by the priests. Accolon fails, and Morgaine retreats from Camelot, able only to watch from afar or in disguise as Mordred’s intrigues unfold. Bradley creates a consistently imagined and attractive version of Goddess religion.74 Largely based on Gardnerian Wicca and the writings of Starhawk (see below), the religion of the enchantresses respects nature, celebrates the female principle above the male, believes in reincarnation and religious tolerance, and is strongly contrasted with the masculinized, sin-conscious and repressive Christianity followed by the more fanatical priests. Yet Arthur and the successive Merlins who seek to mediate or compromise the power of Avalon are not zealots, but pragmatists; they realize that Christianity has the historical momentum to succeed; ‘Christians are a tide that will sweep all men before them like straw’, asserts Kevin, a later Merlin of Britain. To Morgaine’s protest, ‘I do what the Goddess has given me to do’, Kevin ripostes, ‘The Goddess – or your own will and pride and ambition for those you love?’75 Avalon’s is a doomed religion; the place itself, like Atlantis, which Bradley suggests was its forerunner, is gradually drifting into another dimension, and only initiates can find their way there.76 Bradley makes full use of Morgaine’s longevity – she is born before Arthur and she outlives him – to narrate the Arthurian legend without the journeys and battles which Mary Stewart foregrounds. Bradley is more interested in women’s relationships: in the complex enmities and affections existing between Morgaine and her kinswomen, and, in particular, in the traditionally conflicted relationship of the sisters-in-law Morgaine and Gwenhwyfar. Despite the revisionist intentions of Bradley’s retelling, Morgaine cannot redefine the roles assigned to women; she succeeds only in reclaiming the scabbard, the talismanic feminine emblem she herself had made, not the ultimate symbol of masculine power, Excalibur.77 Nevertheless, in a climactic scene Morgaine triumphantly takes back from Camelot the Goddess’s cauldron, the Grail, about to be incorporated into the Christian Mass, as a Eucharistic chalice.78 Morgaine assumes the form of the Goddess, but can’t prevent the Christians from seeing what they want to see, or the cauldron, in the end, from being assimilated within Christianity to the cup of the Last Supper.79 Bradley successfully incorporates all the stories of Morgan known in English tradition, and she motivates many of Morgan’s activities more convincingly

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than other twentieth-century authors.80 Thus Morgaine falls in love with Lancelet, Viviane’s son, very early in the novel. Before they can explore their nascent feelings for one another, they encounter the young Gwenhwyfar for the first time. Lancelet is immediately attracted by Gwenhwyfar’s blonde vulnerablity, and thereafter their romance is for ever frustrated. Morgaine is trapped into marriage with Uriens, believing until too late that Arthur is making a match with Accolon, Uriens’s attractive son. An initiate of Avalon, Accolon is keen to fall in with Morgaine’s plan to recover the sacred sword and scabbard, as much for religious as for erotic reasons. The sword’s intrinsic connection with Avalon motivates Morgaine’s betrayal better than Stewart’s account. The masked ritual of the king-making, following a long separation between Arthur and Morgaine, explains why neither sibling recognized the other when Mordred was conceived. Morgaine is a convincing, likeable if stubborn, character; she is usually well-meaning, though dogmatic when she is absolutely convinced of her rectitude. She moves from tender-heartedness to ruthlessness in Avalon’s cause and only in old age does she realize how much her fate was of her own making. The novel takes some of its final poignancy from the understanding that Morgaine, Viviane, Niniane and Nimuë, all priestesses of Avalon, sacrifice their personal happiness for a doomed religious and political project. The novel ends with Morgaine finding her way to the convent at Glastonbury and realizing that, in the nuns’ veneration of the Virgin Mary, some of the values of Avalon have found a place in Christianity: even if they think otherwise, these women know the power of the Immortal. Exile her as they may, she will prevail. The Goddess will never withdraw herself from mankind … I did the Mother’s work in Avalon until at last those who came after us might bring her into this world. I did not fail. I did what she had given me to do.81

Bradley’s novel was pathbreaking. It gave rise to a number of Arthurian historical romances, usually by women and focusing on a female character, sometimes Morgan, but often Guenevere.82 The Mists of Avalon’s fusing of Arthurian legend with Goddess-worship was also instrumental, if not foundational, in promoting Morgan and the other Ladies and Damsels of the Lake as avatars of the Goddess. Many of Bradley’s inventions or popularizations have now become incorporated into Goddess-lore: that Ygraine was a Lady of the Lake, even originally a priestess of Atlantis, and that there was a cultic sisterhood of the Lake, is now widely accepted.83

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The Mists of Avalon was filmed as a television miniseries in , starring Julianne Margulies as Morgaine, Anjelica Huston as Viviane and Joan Allen as Morgause.84 The series is relatively faithful to the Arthurian plot strand of the book; it omits the link between the religion of Avalon and Atlantis, Morgaine’s incursions into the land of Faery, the intrigue with Accolon to overthrow Arthur and steal Excalibur, the Grail material and the death of Merlin. Morgaine’s marriage to Uriens is, for the first time in Arthurian history, a happy one, and she desists from adultery with Accolon. Morgause is more schemingly villainous than in the book; she almost murders the infant Mordred by exposing him to a snowstorm before, learning from a delirious Morgaine who his father is, she realizes that he is more valuable dead than alive. The dramatic culmination of the Avalon theme comes when Viviane rides with Morgaine to Camelot, where, after Lancelet’s rescue of Gwenhwyfar from the stake, Mordred is keeping Arthur prisoner. Cynically invoking the Goddess in order to gain the political support of the Celtic tribes, he has instituted a brutal regime of sacrifice and torture in her name. Morgause is the power behind Mordred’s shaky throne; rebuked by Viviane for this perversion of Avalon’s ways, Morgause attempts to stab her sister, but is herself killed with the knife. Howling with rage, Mordred kills Viviane and flees. Arthur and Lancelet’s final battle, intercut with the cremation of Morgause and Viviane, produces a stunningly apocalyptic climax in which both the male and female realms are destroyed. Morgaine arrives at the battlefield just in time to gaze into her son’s dying eyes and to bear her brother away to Avalon. The Mists of Avalon is on the whole well-conceived and well-acted; it takes its characters seriously and avoids the fatal whimsy of the  Merlin. Where it diverges from the book, it is generally in the interests of narrative economy; Scott’s script has less compunction than Bradley’s novel about fidelity to Malory, and the new context for the murders of Viviane and Morgause at the moment of a solar eclipse is grandly imagined.

From Enchantress to Goddess In  Robert Graves published his enormously influential book The White Goddess.85 Graves’s book was instrumental in the rebirth – or invention – of the Goddess religion, the Wiccan, or neopagan, spiritual movements in the years after the Second World War. Graves posited a prehistoric religion of western Europe, based largely on his assimilation of Celtic mythological figures to

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the Mediterranean Great Goddess (the ‘White Goddess’ as she is known in Greek).86 The Triple Moon-Goddess manifests herself as Maiden, Mother and Crone, figured in the waxing, full and waning moon; her consort is her brother or son, a seasonal god who, as suggested in Frazer’s Golden Bough, might be ritually sacrificed at the end of the yearly cycle, or replaced by a successor.87 Graves identified Arthurian characters such as Morgan le Fay and Nimuë with aspects of the Goddess; Morgan as ruler of Avalon or the Fortunate Isles; Nimuë as the death-bringer to Merlin.88 In , soon after Graves’s book appeared, the Witchcraft Act of  was repealed; this paved the way for the promulgation in Britain of witchcraft as a religion, a belief popularized by Gerald Gardner and Doreen Valiente, Gardner’s high priestess.89 Witchcraft, as Gardner and Valiente understood it, is the survival of a prehistoric religion, driven underground by Christianity, but which survived in oral traditions passed down in ‘witch families’, a thesis first put forward by Margaret Murray in .90 Valiente was responsible for recasting some important rituals in woman-friendly terms, in particular the ‘Charge of the Goddess’, the central creed of witchcraft, and eventually of the Goddess religion. Valiente eventually split with Gardner, noting the sexism of his formulation of the craft. Goddess religion as a distinctive variety of neopagan practice emerged on the West Coast of the USA. Starhawk records her meeting in the late s with Zsuzsanna Budapest, who was teaching a Goddess-oriented version of Wicca; both Starhawk and Budapest may be credited with the systematization of North American Goddess-worship.91 Graves and Gardner had had their forerunners. As noted above, Bachofen in the nineteenth century, and in the early twentieth century Robert Briffault, had argued for a matriarchal basis to prehistoric religion and social organization.92 The archaeologist Marija Gimbutas claimed to have found material evidence for matriarchal cultures in central Eurasia and elsewhere in the Mediterranean.93 Gimbutas’s claims are contested in academic circles, while Murray’s theory that witchcraft preserved an ancient religion rather than a reconstituted set of ritual practices has largely been discredited. Nevertheless, as Starhawk argues in the latest edition of her central work, The Spiral Dance, historical facts are immaterial in the context of personal faith: the truth of our experience is valid whether it has roots thousands of years old or thirty minutes old, that there is a mythic truth whose proof is shown not through references and footnotes but in the way it engages strong emotions, mobilizes deep life energies, and gives us a sense of history, purpose, and place

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in the world. What gives the Goddess tradition validity is how it works for us now, in the moment, not whether or not someone else worshipped this particular image in the past.94

To argue, on the basis of Morgan and Nimuë’s literary history, that they are not ‘really’ aspects of the Goddess is thus beside the point. Though the enchantresses probably did not originate in an ancient Goddess cult, they have now become part of Goddess worship, identified with particular avatars and incorporated in such rituals as Starhawk’s Waxing Moon Meditation, which celebrates the potential for growth in the maiden figure: Feel your own hidden possibilities and latent potentials; your power to begin and grow. See her as a silver-haired girl running freely through the forest under the slim moon. She is Virgin, eternally unpenetrated, belonging to no one but herself. Call her name ‘Nimuë!’ and feel her power within you.95

Morgan, identified by Starhawk and others with the Irish goddess of battle, Morrígan, is associated with Mars.96 Her attributes are frequently sombre, and linked to the Goddess in her Crone aspect, driven by her appearance as psychopomp to Arthur: ‘Morgan le Fay symbolizes the darker forces of the psyche, which require greater understanding and recognition’, another Goddess site notes.97

Morgan at Glastonbury Goddess worship is an eclectic religion, drawing on a wide range of mythological traditions and mutating to reflect local affiliations. Thus in British Goddess ritual, native figures, drawn from Celtic legend or Arthurian material regarded as late testimony to Celtic tradition, are prominent. Graves himself noted ‘there is an unconscious hankering in Britain after goddesses, if not for a goddess as dominant as the aboriginal Triple Goddess’.98 Gardner asserted that Arthurian tradition forms part of the witchcraft legacy, ‘medieval romances … in which the Gods and Goddesses appear under strange disguises; the Moon Goddess, for instance, appearing as “Morgan le Fay”’.99 Writers such as Caitlín Matthews emphasize the connections between the enchantresses, early Celtic legend and evolving Goddess ritual.100 Nowhere are Arthur’s enchantresses more venerated today then in the Somerset town of Glastonbury. Associated with Arthur even before the ‘discovery’ of Arthur’s tomb in , Glastonbury has been a centre of Arthurian tourism for at least 

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years.101 The opening of the railway line from Bruton to Highbridge on the main Bristol line in  brought numerous visitors to Arthur’s resting place.102 In the early twentieth century the Arthurian and magical ambience of Glastonbury made it a magnet for a range of mystics, psychics and artists. The composer Rutland Boughton inaugurated the Glastonbury Festivals in , which ran until .103 In collaboration with Reginald Buckley, who wrote the librettos, Boughton produced two of what would eventually be a cycle of five Arthurian operas in the Glastonbury Festivals.104 Buckley died in , but Boughton worked intermittently on the cycle for the rest of his life. The roles for enchantresses in the operatic cycle were limited to the Lady of the Lake and Nimuë, who appear as largely benevolent doubles of Merlin.105 In Buckley’s original libretti, Morgan had a prominent villainous role in The Holy Grail and The Death of Arthur: The chamber of Morgan le Faye Is heavy with strong perfume. Like a lurid Eastern queen On a divan she sits.106

An open-air theatre where religious and folk plays were staged was established with the patronage of Alice Buckton, who bought Chalice Well in  and who quarrelled with Boughton.107 John Cowper Powys’s sprawling A Glastonbury Romance () brilliantly captures the intensely mystical and religious atmosphere of Glastonbury in the pre-war years; Alice Buckton’s mystery-play productions were the inspiration for Geard’s great Christian ‘Pageant’, staged on the slopes of the Tor in Powys’s novel.108 Glastonbury’s numinous atmosphere is created in part by the striking nature of its landscape, the Tor’s mysterious, spiral terracing and the lowlying, often flooded Levels which surround it. There are abundant springs and wells in the area, notably Chalice Well, whose iron-rich waters stain red, and which, in the early part of the twentieth century, became associated with the Grail legend.109 More recently Glastonbury has become a centre for neopagan worship; Goddess devotees have been drawn to the town by its powerful associations with the enchantress-Goddesses of Arthurian legend. Goddess adherents trace the body of the Goddess in the landscape, with her vulva at the spot where the Abbey was erected and with the Tor as her pregnant belly.110 That Malory refuses to confirm whether Arthur is resting with Morgan in the Isle of Avalon in the west, as Geoffrey claimed, or is buried in

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Image not available

. .

The Nine Morgens from the  Glastonbury Goddess Festival

Glastonbury, as William of Malmesbury records, works to fuse Glastonbury and Avalon in the popular mind. Glastonbury was a virtual island before the fifteenth-century reclamation ditches were dug; archaeological evidence of a nearby Iron Age lake-dwelling tribe has been found. Thus the Goddess manifests herself in Glastonbury as Morgan, the Lady of the Isle of Avalon, associated with the eight sisters from the Vita Merlini, the ninefold Muses of Goddess tradition. Kathy Jones identifies Morgana as the Death Crone, ferrying the dying in her boat, while Vivien and Nimuë are named as faerie queens who also dwell on Avalon. A Goddess temple was founded at Glastonbury in ; its presiding Goddesses include ‘the Lady of Avalon (who is Morgen la Fey), the Nine Morgens’, ‘the Crone of Avalon, … Lady of the Lake’.111 An annual Goddess festival is held at Lammas in late July–early August.112 The climax of the festival is the Goddess procession; a large figure of an aspect of the Goddess was originally drawn in a cart through the streets and then to the summit of the Tor. Recently the ceremonial figures have been made of wicker, light enough for an individual to carry. Marion Bowman notes how the Goddess procession, starting at the temple and proceeding clockwise towards the Tor, is the mirror image of the Catholic procession, which begins on the Tor and moves clockwise to the Abbey, reclaiming the sacred space for the Goddess.113 In  the celebrated avatar of the Goddess was the Nine Morgens, those learned, kindly sisters of the Island of Apples.114

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Conclusions Morgan and her fellow enchantresses have had a hugely successful century and their appeal looks set to continue in the new millennium. Morgan has benefited primarily from the feminist re-envisioning, not only of Arthurian legend, but of women’s roles as teachers, law-makers and healers, and from the important principles of female empowerment which have come to the fore in the last fifty years. The enchantresses’ demand for education in forbidden knowledge, and the manipulation of men which it entailed, central to the nineteenth century’s understanding of their role, has become less relevant with women’s emancipation and admission to higher education. The twentieth century understands Morgan and her sisters in Freudian terms, woven into a tight nexus of relationships, a domain which offers free play for all the tensions and complexities of the family. The enchantresses are now also envisaged in strongly visual terms, appearing in films which exploit the drama of their personal lives and their exclusion from power, and their images are popularized in other media; the nineteenth-century paintings are a mouse-click away. The task of the modern Morgan has been to encourage women to reclaim agency for themselves on personal, political and spiritual planes; she has remade herself and her sisters as the wise, good and beautiful healers of the Island of Apples, where their story began back in the twelfth century. Morgan, Vivien–Nimuë, the Lady of the Lake and the Queen of Orkney – not forgetting their doubles in the Dame d’Avalon, Sebile and the Queen of North Wales – have been regarded by some critics as purely functional figures, straightforwardly embodying the good or evil woman in a fundamentally uninteresting way.115 Yet the tradition of the enchantress is as dynamic as ever: in medieval and modern incarnations Arthur’s enchantresses embody complex and individualized significances within the texts in which they act, and in the larger Arthurian universe. Their access to a source of power largely independent of men, the uses to which they put that power, their gains from it and the price they pay for it grant us a perspective from which we can think critically and productively about chivalry, about gender and, above all, about the uses to which we put the past.

Notes

Abbreviations BBIAS Lancelot

Bibliographical Bulletin of the International Arthurian Society. Lancelot: roman en prose du XIIIe siècle, ed. A. Micha,  vols (Geneva, –). L-G Lancelot-Grail: The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate in Translation, ed. N.J. Lacy et al.,  vols (New York, –). MA La mort le roi Artu, ed. J. Frappier (Geneva, ). Malory, Works Sir Thomas Malory, Works, ed. E. Vinaver, rev. P.J.C. Field,  vols, rd edn (Oxford, ). Merlin Merlin: roman en prose du XIIIe siècle, ed. A. Micha (Geneva, ). Prophécies Prophécies de Merlin, ed. L.A. Paton,  vols (New York and London, ). Prophesies Prophesies de Merlin (Codex Bodmer ), ed. A. Berthelot (Cologny-Genève, ). PV La Version Post-Vulgate de la ‘Queste del Saint Graal’ et de la ‘Mort Artu’: Troisième partie du Roman du Graal, ed. F. Bogdanow,  vols (Paris, – ). SGGK Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. J.R.R. Tolkien and E.V. Gordon, nd rev. edn, N. Davis (Oxford, ). Suite La Suite du Roman de Merlin, ed. G. Roussineau,  vols (Geneva, ). TP Le Roman de Prose Tristan, gen. ed. P. Ménard,  vols (Geneva, –). TR La Tavola Ritonda, ed. E. Trevi (Milan, ). TR trans. Tristan and the Round Table, trans. A. Shaver (Binghamton NY, ). VV The Vulgate Version of the Arthurian Romances, ed. H.O. Sommer,  vols (Washington DC, –).

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Introduction . Terence Hanbury White, The Once and Future King (London, ), –. . Hans R. Jauss, ‘The Alterity and Modernity of Medieval Literature’, New Literary History  () –, at . . I take these dates for convenience largely from The New Arthurian Encyclopedia, ed. N.J. Lacy (New York and London, ).

Chapter  . Geoffrey of Monmouth, The Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth, ed. N. Wright,  vols (Cambridge, –); History of the Kings of Britain, trans. L. Thorpe (Harmondsworth, ). . Geoffrey, Historia Regum, I. ; History, trans. Thorpe, . . In MS. Cotton Vespasian E iv; Geoffrey of Monmouth, Vita Merlini, ed. and trans. B. Clark (Cardiff, ). . Vita Merlini, ed. and trans. Clark, ll. –. . Chief proponents of Morgan as originating as a Celtic Other World figure include Lucy A. Paton, Studies in the Fairy Mythology of the Arthurian Romance (Boston, , rev. R.S. Loomis, ); Roger S. Loomis, Wales and the Arthurian Legend (Cardiff, ), and ‘Morgain la Fée in Oral Tradition’, Romania  (), –; Margaret Jennings, ‘“Heavens Defend Me from that Welsh Fairy”: The Metamophosis of Morgain la Fée in the Romances’, in G.S. Burgess, ed., Court and Poet (Liverpool, ), –; Laurence Harf-Lancner, Les fées au moyen âge: Morgane et Mélusine: la naissance des fées (Paris, ), in particular –; Yoko Hemmi, ‘Morgain la Fée’s Water Connection’, Studies in Medieval Language and Literature  (), –. Against these, see Trioedd Ynys Prydein: The Welsh Triads, ed. R. Bromwich (Cardiff, ), –; and Fanni Bogdanow, ‘Morgain’s Role in the Thirteenth-Century French Prose Romances of the Arthurian Cycle’, Medium Aevum  (), –. . Edmond Faral, ‘L’île d’Avallon et la fée Morgane’, Mélanges Alfred Jeanroy (Paris, ), –, at . Clark, Vita Merlini, , disputes the connection with the Muses, noting that only eight sisters are named. . Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae sive Originum, ed. W.M. Lindsay,  vols (Oxford, ); ‘De Insulis’, II, XIV, §§ –. . For Medea in the Latin tradition, see Ovid, Metamorphoses, rd edn, trans. F.J. Miles, ed. G.P. Goold (Cambridge MA, ), VII, ll. –, Ovid, Heroides, rd edn, trans. G. Showerman, ed. G.P. Goold (Cambridge MA, ), VI, ll. –; XII; Seneca, Medea in Tragedies I, trans. F.J. Miller, ed. F. Leo (Cambridge MA, ); Circe in Ovid, Metamorphoses XIV, ll. –, Virgil, Eclogues, ed. R. Coleman (Cambridge, ), VIII, –; and Hyginus, Fabulae, ed. P.K. Marshall (Munich, ), §§ CCXV, CXCIX; The Myths of Hyginus, ed. and trans. M. Grant (Lawrence KA, ), , . . On the medieval commentary tradition, see Ralph Hexter, Ovid and Medieval Schooling: Studies in Medieval School Commentaries on Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, Epistulae ex Ponto and Epistulae Heroidum (Munich, ). . Benoît de Ste Maure, Le Roman de Troie, ed. L. Constans,  vols (Paris, –); Le

Notes



Roman de Troie, trans. E. Baumgartner (Paris, ). . For the medieval Medea and her classical antecedents, see Ruth Morse, The Medieval Medea (Cambridge, ). For a full consideration of Medea as enchantress see the thoughtful study of Nicola McDonald, ‘Divers folk diversely they seyde: A Study of the Figure of Medea in Medieval Literature’ (D.Phil. thesis, Oxford, ), especially –. . Le Roman de Troie, ll. –. . Gervase of Tilbury, Otia Imperialia, ed. and trans. S.E. Banks and J.W. Binns (Oxford, ), –. . La Suite du Roman de Merlin, ed. G. Roussineau,  vols (Geneva, ), I,  hereafter Suite); Lancelot-Grail: The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate in Translation, ed. N.J. Lacy et al.,  vols (New York, –), IV,  (hereafter L-G); Sir Thomas Malory, Works, ed. E. Vinaver, rev. P.J.C. Field,  vols, rd edn (Oxford, ), I, –. . Sir James G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, rd edn (London, ), . . For an introduction to medieval demonology, see Dyan Elliot, Fallen Bodies: Pollution, Sexuality and Demonology in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, ); see also Valerie Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (Oxford, ), –. . Tertullian, ‘Ad Uxorem’, Opera Pars I: Opera Catholica (Turnhout, ), V–VI, –; Augustine, De Civitate Dei, eds. and trans. G. McCracken, W.M. Green et al.,  vols (Cambridge MA, –), Book VIII.xix, vol. III: –. . Isidore, Etymologiae, ed. Lindsay, VIII.ix; for a summary of Isidore’s views, see Flint, Rise of Magic, –. See also Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, ),  for the transition from purely demonic to natural magic in the mid-thirteenth century. . Hartmann von Aue, Erec, ed. A. Leitzmann and L. Wolff, th edn, ed. C. Cormeau and K. Gärtner (Tübingen, ), ll. –. . Erec, trans. C. Edwards (Cambridge, in progress), ll. –. . See Kommentar zur Artusepik Hartmans von Aue, ed. L. Okken (Amsterdam and Atlanta GA, ), –, for a full discussion of the figure of Feimurgân in Hartmann. . See Judith Yarnall, Transformations of Circe: The History of an Enchantress (Urbana IL and Chicago, ). . For Erichtho, see Lucan, Civil War (Pharsalia), ed. and trans. J.D. Duff (Cambridge MA, ), VI, ll. –. See also Flint, Rise of Magic, , , for Augustine and Isidore’s horror of necromancy. Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, –, examines necromancy in its expanded medieval sense of raising spirits as a fundamentally learned practice. . Cyril Edwards, ‘The Elf, the Witch and the Devil: Lexical and Conceptual ShapeShifting in Medieval and Early Modern Europe’, in N. Bredendick, ed., Mapping the Threshold: Essays in Liminal Analysis (Madrid, ), –. . Hartmann, Erec, ll. , . . Gervase, Otia Imperialia, –; Gerald of Wales, Speculum Ecclesiae in Opera Giraldi Cambrensis, eds. J.S. Brewer, J.F. Dimock and G.F. Warner,  vols (London, –), IV, –. . Layamon, Layamon’s Arthur: The Arthurian Section of Layamon’s Brut, ed. and trans. W.R.J. Barron and S.C. Weinberg (Harlow, ), ll. –. Wace, Roman de Brut: A History of the British, ed. and trans. J. Weiss (Exeter, ), ll. –. See also



. .

.

. . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. .

King Arthur’s Enchantresses Cyril Edwards, ‘Layamon’s Elves’ in R. Allen, L. Perry and J. Roberts, eds, Layamon: Contexts, Language, and Interpretation (London, ), –. Lancelot: roman en prose du XIIIe siècle. ed. A. Micha,  vols (Geneva, –), I,  (hereafter Lancelot); L-G, II, . Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. J.R.R. Tolkien and E.V. Gordon, nd rev. edn N. Davis (Oxford, ), ll. – (hereafter SGGK); for Merlin as divine in the Lancelot see below, . Cf. Myra Olstead, ‘Morgan le Fay in Malory’s “Morte Darthur”’, BBIAS  (), –: ‘Morgan, true fay in the swift and efficient working of her will, independent, single-purposed, clever in stratagem, resourceful, is no real fay, however compelling she may be of our admiration’ (). Harf-Lancner, Les fées au moyen âge, . Here and below ‘Breton’ may equally be translated as ‘Briton’. Lancelot, VII, ; The Vulgate Version of the Arthurian Romances, ed. H.O. Sommer,  vols (Washington, DC, –), III,  (hereafter VV); L-G, II, . Historia, ed. Wright, I, ; History, trans. Thorpe, –. Merlin: roman en prose du XIIIe siècle, ed. A. Micha (Geneva, ) (hereafter Merlin); Merlin and the Grail: Joseph of Arimathea, Merlin, Perceval: The Trilogy of Arthurian Romances attributed to Robert de Boron, trans. N. Bryant (Cambridge, ). Prophesies de Merlin (Codex Bodmer ), ed. A. Berthelot (Cologny-Genève, ),  (hereafter Prophesies), and see below. Lancelot, VIII, –; L-G, II, ; see also Elspeth Kennedy, Lancelot and the Grail (Oxford, ), . Viviane’s writing skills: VV, II, –; L-G, I, –; Ninianne’s writing: Lancelot, VII, ; VV, III, ; L-G, II, . Morgan’s study: Merlin, ; VV, II, ; L-G, I, . VV, II, ; L-G, I, . Suite, I, –; L-G, IV, –. See also Malory, Works, III, . See Maureen Fries, ‘Female Heroes, Heroines and Counter-Heroes’, in T.S. Fenster, ed., Arthurian Women (London and New York, ), –. Fries notes that the ‘Female Counter-Hero’ must be sexually initiated (). Prophécies de Merlin, ed. L.A. Paton,  vols (New York and London, ), I,  (hereafter Prophécies). See Middle English Dictionary, ed. S.M. Kuhn et al. (Ann Arbor, –) s.v. nigromancy §§ –. Malory, Works, I, . Helen Cooper, The English Romance in Time: Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare (Oxford, ), –. Lancelot, VII, ; VV, III, ; L-G, II, . Kennedy, Lancelot and the Grail, –. La Version Post-Vulgate de la ‘Queste del Saint Graal’ et de la ‘Mort Artu’: Troisième partie du Roman du Graal, ed. F. Bogdanow,  vols (Paris, –), II, – (hereafter PV); L-G, V, –. Prophesies, . VV, II, –; L-G, I, –, quotation from VV, II, ; L-G, I, . Flint, Rise of Magic, , –, demonstrates that divination is regarded by some authorities as contrary to human free will and divine Providence. Astrology for divinatory

Notes . . . . . . .

. . . . .

. .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

. .



purposes is rehabilitated when used responsibly. Lancelot, VII, –; VV, III, –; L-G, II, –. Suite, I, –; L-G, IV, ; Malory, Works, I, –. Lancelot, IV, ; VV, V, ; L-G, III, . See Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, –, –. Chrétien de Troyes, Le Chevalier au lion, ed. M. Roques (Paris, ), ll. – and Erec et Enide, ed. M. Roques (Paris, ), ll. –. Prophesies, –; Alexander l’Orphelin: A Prose Tale of the Fifteenth Century, ed. C. Pickford (Manchester, ), ; cf. Malory, Works, II, –, and see Chapter . For the drug soporite, see Lancelot, I, –; L-G, II, –. Hallucinations: Lancelot, I, –; L-G, II, . Nasal drugging: Lancelot, V, ; L-G, III, ; see also Chapter . See Kennedy, Lancelot and the Grail, –, –. See Geraldine Heng, ‘Enchanted Ground: The Feminine Subtext in Malory’, in Fenster, ed., Arthurian Women, –. Suite, I, –; L-G, IV, ; Malory, Works, I, –. Suite, II, –; L-G, IV, –; Malory, Works, I, –. Le Roman de Tristan, ed. R.L. Curtis,  vols (Cambridge, ), II, –; The Romance of Tristan, trans. R.L. Curtis (Oxford, ), –; Malory, Works, I, –, cf. Eilert Löseth, Le Roman en Prose de Tristan, Le Roman de Palamède et la Compilation de Rusticien de Pise: Analyse Critique d’après le manuscrits de Paris (Paris, ), §§–. Prophesies, –; Prophécies, I, –. This barge, made by Merlin, is the one which will conduct Arthur away after the final battle (Prophécies, I, ). Lancelot, VIII, –; VV, III, ff; L-G, II, –; Kieckhefer, Magic, . For the different symbolic value of the shield when it is sent by Morgan, see Chapter , –. On the various marvellous shields of the Lancelot, see Kennedy, Lancelot and the Grail, –, –. Magic chessboard: Lancelot, IV, –; L-G, III, –. Helen Cooper, ‘Magic that does not work’, Medievalia et Humanistica  (), –, and now The English Romance in Time, . For Nenyve’s arrangement for Pelleas, see Malory, Works, III, , . Suite, I, , ; II, ; L-G, IV, , –; Malory, Works, I, , –; for the necessity of removing the scabbard for the plot, see Chapter , –. Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, . See Caroline Walker Bynum, Metamorphosis and Identity (New York, ), –. Lancelot, VII, ; VV, III, ; L-G, II, . Suite, II, –; L-G, IV, ; Malory, Works, I, . VV, II, –; L-G, I, –. Here VV, II, ; L-G, I, . See Chapter . Lancelot, I, –; L-G, II, –; and see Chapter . Lancelot, II, ; L-G, III, ; Malory, Works, II, –; and see Chapter . See Kennedy, Lancelot and the Grail, ; Anne Berthelot, ‘Le Lac de Lancelot’, in D. Hüe and C. Ferlampin-Acher, eds, Le Monde et l’Autre Monde, Actes du colloque arthurien de Rennes ( –  mars ) (Orléans, ), –. Prophesies, –. Prophesies, .



King Arthur’s Enchantresses

. Prophesies, . . Prophesies, –. . This is not the only place in the Prophesies where the diabolical nature of enchantment is made clear: see also Prophesies,  and Chapter , . . PV, II, –; L-G, V, . The L-G translation cited here follows the Spanish and Portuguese accounts found in the Demanda-tradition; Bogdanow’s main text is French at this point, and it is Guenevere’s tongue which burns like a candle, . . Prophesies, –; and see  above. . VV, II, ; L-G, I, . . SGGK, ll. –; Lancelot, I, ; L-G, II, . . Suite, I, –; L-G, IV, . Morgan’s true ugliness is revealed at the climax of John Boorman’s Excalibur; see Chapter , –. . R. Howard Bloch, Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love (Chicago and London, ), –; SGGK, ll. – and n. . For Morgan’s beauty in Italian tradition, see Edmund Gardner, The Arthurian Legend in Italian Tradition (London and New York, ), . . Lancelot, IV, ; L-G, III, . For closer analysis of this scene, and Malory’s version, see Chapter , –. . Malory, Works, I, –. . Morgan and Sebile’s fight: Prophesies, –; Brehus’s offer: –. . Prophesies, ; Malory, Works, II, . . Malory, Works, I, –; Heng, ‘Enchanted Ground’, . . Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, –.

Chapter  . Étienne de Rouen, Le Dragon Normand et autres poèmes d’Étienne de Rouen, ed. M.H. Ormot (Rouen, ), ll. –; Chrétien de Troyes, Erec et Enide, ed. M. Roques (Paris, ), ll. –. The relative chronology of Draco Normannicus and Erec is not certain; see Maurice Delbouille, ‘Le Draco Normannicus, source d’Erec et Enide’, in Mélanges Pierre Le Gentil (Paris, ), –. . See now, though, Juliet Mitchell, Mad Men and Medusas: Reclaiming Hysteria and the Effects of Sibling Relations on the Human Condition (Harmondsworth, ), and Juliet Mitchell, Siblings (Cambridge, ). . See Stephen Bank and Michael Kahn, ‘Intense Sibling Loyalties’, in M. Lamb and B. Sutton-Smith, eds, Sibling Relationships: Their Nature and Significance across the Lifespan (Hillsdale, NJ and London, ), –, at . . For sibling incest in medieval texts, see Elizabeth Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination (Oxford, ), –. . Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, vols  and  in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. and trans. J. Strachey,  vols (London, –), : . . VV, II, –; L-G, I, ; VV, II, –; L-G, I, , for Galescalain’s resolution to follow Arthur; VV, II, –; L-G, I,  for Yvain’s defection. Chapter  examines the sisters’ role here. . Malory, Works, I, .

Notes



. There is confusion in Historia Regum Britanniae about this relationship; the lady in question is also said to be Arthur’s aunt. . See Madeleine Blaess, ‘Arthur’s Sisters’, BBIAS  (), –. For Anna, see Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Britannie, ed. N. Wright,  vols (Cambridge, ), II, –, ; The History of the Kings of Britain, trans. L. Thorpe (Harmondsworth, ), –, ; and De Ortu Waluuanii, ed. and trans. M. Leake Day (New York and London, ); for a detailed account of the Queen of Orkney, see Chapter . . See further Blaess, ‘Arthur’s Sisters’, and Chapter . Blaess notes Blasine as the mother of Galescalain in the Merlin and Livre d’Artus and Brimesent as the mother of Yvain (Yvonet) in the Merlin. Yvain’s mother’s name is revived as Bellicent, a form borrowed from the late Middle English Arthour and Merlin by Tennyson in his first Idyll, ‘The Coming of Arthur’. For the importance of the sister’s son relationship, see Thomas J. Garbáty, ‘The Uncle–Nephew Motif: New Light into its Origins and Development’, Folklore  (), –. . SGGK, ll. –, and see Chapter . . Trioedd Ynys Prydein: The Welsh Triads, ed. R. Bromwich (Cardiff, ), . Cf. also Lucy A. Paton, Studies in the Fairy Mythology of the Arthurian Romance (Boston, ; rev. R.S. Loomis, ), . Chapter  examines further the Merlin’s depiction of relationship between Arthur, his sisters and his nephews. . VV, II, ; L-G, I, . . See Suite, I, xli–lxii, for details of the MSS and their relationship to one another. For the Arthur and Accolon episode, see Suite, I, –, II, –, –; L-G, IV, –, –, –, –. Fanni Bogdanow, The Romance of the Grail: A Study of the Structure and Genesis of a Thirteenth-century Arthurian Prose Romance (Manchester and New York, ), , notes that in the Tristan en Prose Morgan is said to have been exiled from the court for her great disloyalty. The Tristan en Prose knows the Post-Vulgate Cycle, but whether her disloyalty is this conspiracy against Arthur is unclear; see further Chapter . . Suite, I, ; L-G, IV, ; Malory, Works, I, . . Suite, I,  –; L-G, IV,  –. Malory omits this precursor to the main account. . See Laurence Harf-Lancner, Les fées au moyen âge: Morgane et Mélusine: la naissance des fées, –. . Helen Cooper, ‘Magic that does not work’, Medievalia et Humanistica  (), –, and now in The English Romance in Time (Oxford, ), . . Suite, I, –, II, –, –; L-G, IV, –; –. . ‘Arthur and Accolon’ in Malory, Works, I, –, at . Vinaver observes wrily, ‘Accolon seems to know more about Morgan’s secret designs than is compatible with his alleged innocence’, Works, III, . . Malory, Works, I, . . Malory, Works, I, . . For the whole episode, see Suite, II, –; L-G, IV, –; Malory, Works, I, –. . Suite, II, ; L-G, IV, ; Malory, Works, I, . . M. Olstead, ‘Morgan le Fay in Malory’s “Morte Darthur”’, BBIAS  (), –, at ; for Medea as one of Morgan’s archetypes, see Chapter  and Ovid, Heroides, XII.



King Arthur’s Enchantresses

. See Chapters  and . For surveys of Morgan’s career in Malory, see Olstead, ‘Morgan le Fay in Malory’; Maureen Fries, ‘From the Lady to the Tramp: The Decline of Morgan le Fay in Medieval Romance’, Arthuriana / (), –; Geraldine Heng, ‘Enchanted Ground: The Feminine Subtext in Malory’, in T.S. Fenster, ed., Arthurian Women (New York, ), –; Margaret Jennings, ‘“Heavens defend me from that Welsh fairy”: The Metamorphosis of Morgan la Fee in the Romances’, in G.S. Burgess, ed., Court and Poet (Liverpool, ), –. . Malory, Works, II, . . Suite, II, ; L-G, IV, . . For discussion of the parallels between Morgan and Mordred in Malory, see Henry G. Morgan, ‘The Role of Morgan le Fay in Malory’s Morte D’Arthur’, Southern Quarterly  (–), –. . For Mordred’s forgery, see La mort le roi Artu, ed. J. Frappier (Geneva, ) (hereafter MA), ; L-G, IV, . For Mordred’s use of propaganda, see Malory, Works, III, –. . Malory, Works, III, . . Suite, II, –; L-G, IV, . . VV, II, ; L-G, I, –. Morgan’s bastardy is found only in the manuscripts utilized by Micha, Merlin, . See L-G, I, , n. . See Chapter . . Suite, I, ; L-G, IV, . . See Chapter . . On twelfth-century changes in thinking about marriage, see R. Howard Bloch, Etymologies and Genealogies: A Literary Anthropology of the French Middle Ages (Chicago, ), –, –. For views of marriage contemporary with Malory, see Felicity Riddy, ‘Middle English Romance: Family, Marriage, Intimacy’, in R.L. Krueger, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance (Cambridge, ), –, especially –; see also Neil Cartlidge, Medieval Marriage: Literary Approaches  – (Woodbridge, ). . For women as disruptive to the chivalric ethos, see Roberta L. Krueger, ‘Questions of Gender in Old French Courtly Romance’, in Krueger, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance, – at –, and Roberta L. Krueger, ‘Desire, Meaning, and the Female Reader: The Problem in Chrétien’s Charrete’, in C. Baswell and W. Sharpe, eds, The Passing of Arthur (New York and London, ), –. . Suite, II, ; L-G, IV, . . Erec, ed. M. Roques, ll. –. . Charles Foulon, ‘La fée Morgue dans les romans de Chrétien de Troyes’, in Mélanges Jean Frappier,  vols (Geneva, ), I, –. . VV, II, ; L-G, I, ; Livre d’Artus, in VV, VII, , has a much reduced description of the affair. . See Paton, Studies in the Fairy Mythology, –; Harf-Lancner, Les fées au moyen âge, , who also notes the similarity between Guiomar’s name and the names of the heroes of a number of Breton lais with fairy-mistress plots, and the brother of a powerful enchantress in Malory’s ‘Tale of Sir Gareth’, Works, I, –. . See  above. . VV, II, ; L-G, I, . . VV, IV, –; Lancelot, I, ; LG, II, .

Notes



. For a lady’s responsibility for the morals of her ladies-in-waiting, compare Christine de Pizan, Le Livre des Trois Vertus, ed. C.C. Willard and E. Hicks (Paris, ), –; Treasury of the City of Ladies, trans. S. Lawson (Harmondsworth, ), –. . VV, VII, , where the separation of the two lovers leads almost immediately into the creation of the Val sans Retour. See also Kurt Wais, ‘Morgan amante d’Accalon et rivale de Guenièvre’, BBIAS  (), –. . Morgan’s messenger: VV, IV, –; Lancelot, I, –; L-G, II, –. . VV, IV, ; Lancelot, I, –; L-G, II, . . Le Roman de Tristan, ed. R.L. Curtis,  vols (Cambridge, ), II, –; The Romance of Tristan, trans. R.L. Curtis (Oxford, ), –; Malory, Works, I, –, cf. E. Löseth, Le Roman en Prose de Tristan, Le Roman de Palamède et la Compilation de Rusticien de Pise: Analyse Critique d’après le manuscrits de Paris (Paris, , repr. Geneva, ), §§–. . See Mantel et Cor: deux lais du XIIe siècle, ed. P. Bennett (Exeter, ); Jeff Rider, ‘The Other Worlds of romance’, in Krueger, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance, –, at ; and Helen Cooper, The English Romance in Time, –, for discussion of the chastity-test motif. . Malory, Works, II, . See Le Roman de Tristan en Prose, gen. ed. P. Ménard (Geneva, –),  vols (hereafter TP), III, ed. G. Roussineau (Geneva, ), –, for giving of shield; – for events at the Tournament itself; and see Chapter  for further discussion of the relationship of Morgan and Tristan in the Tristan en Prose. . Malory, Works, II, –. . Lancelot, VII, , I, ; L-G, II, , ; Chrétien de Troyes, Le Chevalier de la Charrete, ed. M. Roques (Paris, ), ll. –. . Prophesies, –; Prophécies, –. Guenevere’s intense emotional reaction here may be compared with Morgan’s unrealized aim of frightening her to death in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, see Chapter . Lancelot eventually provides Morgan with the substantiation she needs in his series of autobiographical paintings. . Charles Méla, ‘Life in La Mort le roi Artu’, in C. Baswell and W. Sharpe, eds, The Passing of Arthur: New Essays in Arthurian Tradition (New York and London, ), –, at . . MA, –; L-G, IV, –. Elspeth Kennedy, Lancelot and the Grail (Oxford, ), –, notes how Morgan will use the paintings to construe the events of the Lancelot in the worst possible light. . Agravain’s earlier warning: MA, –; L-G, IV, ; public accusation: MA, –; L-G, IV, ; Malory, Works, III, –. . MA, ; L-G, IV, . . PV, II, –; L-G, V, –. . Helen Cooper, ‘Counter-Romance: Civil Strife and Father-Killing in the Prose Romances’, in H. Cooper and S. Mapstone, eds, The Long Fifteenth Century: Essays for Douglas Gray (Oxford, ), –, at . . For the return of Excalibur as a signal for the barge to arrive, see Olstead, ‘Morgan le Fay in Malory’, . . For the impact of the discovery of the tomb at Glastonbury on the traditions of the ‘hope of the Britons/Bretons’, see James Carley, ‘Arthur in English History’, in W.R.J. Barron, ed., The Arthur of the English (Cardiff, ), –. . Geoffrey of Monmouth, Vita Merlini, ed. and trans. B. Clark (Cardiff, ), ll.



King Arthur’s Enchantresses

–. . The other ladies are not identified in the Mort Artu, the Post-Vulgate Mort Artu or in the Stanzaic Morte, though here the chief lady addresses Arthur as ‘brother’. Malory, Works, III, –; Stanzaic Morte Arthur, in King Arthur’s Death, ed. L.D. Benson (Exeter, ), ll. –. . For a full survey of Morgan’s appearances in chanson de geste and extra-Arthurian romance, see Jeanne Wathelet-Willem, ‘La fée Morgain dans la chanson de geste’, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale  (), –. . La Bataille Loquifer, ed. M. Barnett (Oxford, ), –. . The Joie de la Cort episode is discussed at length in Chapter . . Le Bâtard de Bouillon, ed. R.F. Cook (Geneva, ), ff. . Guillem de Torroella, La Faula, ed. P. Bohigas and J.V. Alcover (Tarragona, ). See also W.J. Entwistle, The Arthurian Legend in the Spanish Peninsula (London and Toronto, ), ff.; and Marina S. Brownlee, ‘Romance at the Crossroads: Medieval Spanish Paradigms and Cervantine Revisions’, in Krueger, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance, –, at . . Joanot Martorell, Tirant lo Blanc, ed. M. de Riquer,  vols (Barcelona, ), II, –; Tirant lo Blanc, trans. D.H. Rosenthal (London, ), –. . This is the Catalan form of Brehus sans pitié whom we met in Chapter ; see also Prophesies de Merlin (where he is a son of Merlin), Tristan en Prose, La Tavola Ritonda, and Malory, ‘The Book of Sir Tristram’, Works, I–II, –. . See Gayle Rubin, ‘The Traffic in Women: Notes on the “Political Economy” of Sex’, in R. Retier, ed., Toward an Anthropology of Women (New York, ), –; Georges Duby, Le chevalier, la femme et le prêtre (Paris, ); Bloch, Etymologies, –.

Chapter  . See Corinne Cooper, ‘La dame, la fée et le don contraignant: éléments de rationalisation du merveilleux et poétique romanesque’, in D. Hüe and C. Ferlampin-Acher, eds, Le Monde et l’Autre Monde: Actes du colloque arthurien de Rennes ( –  mars ) (Orléans, ), –. . Laurence Harf-Lancner, Les fées au moyen âge: Morgane et Mélusine: la naissance des fées (Paris, ), . . See Chapter , –; Chrétien de Troyes, Erec et Enide, ed. M. Roques (Paris, ), ll. –; see also Charles Foulon, ‘La fée Morgue dans les romans de Chrétien de Troyes’, in Mélanges Jean Frappier,  vols (Geneva, ), I, –. . Brigitte Burrichter, ‘Die narrative Funktion der Feen und ihrer Welt in der französischen Artusliteratur des . und . Jahrhunderts’, in F. Wolfzettel, ed., Das Wunderbare in der arthurischen Literatur: Problem und Perspektiven (Tübingen, ), – notes that the fairy implications of the garden are merely decorative (). . R. Howard Bloch, Etymologies and Genealogies: A Literary Anthropology of the French Middle Ages (Chicago, ), –. . E. Jane Burns, Bodytalk: When Women Speak in Old French Literature (Philadelphia, ), . . Knights who find themselves in Maboagrain’s position are legion; chief among them

Notes

.

.

. . . . .

. . . . .

.

. . . . . . . . .

. . .



are Kay of Estral, discussed below, and Malory’s Red Knight of the Red Launds, Sir Ironsides, in ‘The Tale of Sir Gareth’, Malory, Works, I, –. Compare the alternations between ice and fire in Visio Tnugdali, ed. A. Wagner (Erlangen, ). The best parallel is, however, in Visio Thurkilli, where fornicators boil or freeze in cauldrons of liquid. See Visio Thurkilli relatore, ut videtur, Radulpho de Coggeshall, ed. P.G. Schmidt (Leipzig, ). A similar punishment is visited by Morgan on her own daughter in the fourteenth-century Italian cantare La Ponzela Gaia, also as a consequence of sexual activity (see Chapter ). Laurence Harf-Lancner, ‘Le Val sans Retour ou la prise du pouvoir par les femmes’, in D. Buschinger and A. Crépin, eds, Amour, mariage et transgressions au moyen age (Göppingen, ), –, at . For the origin of the Val sans Retour, see Lancelot, I, –; L-G, II, –; Livre d’Artus, in VV, VII, . Here Lancelot, I, ; L-G, II, . VV, VII, . Lancelot, I, ; L-G, II, . Lancelot, I, –; L-G, II, –. Lancelot, I, ; L-G, II, ; Laurie Finke, ‘Towards a Cultural Poetics of Romance’, Genre  (), –, similarly identifies the Joie de la Cort in Erec as taking place in a garden symbolic of female genitalia. Lancelot, I, ; L-G, II, . Harf-Lancner, ‘Le Val sans Retour’, . Lancelot, I, ; L-G, II, . Lancelot, I, ; L-G, II, . Compare Roger Dragonetti, La technique poétique dans la chanson courtoise (Bruges, ), ,  –, for discussion of the prison metaphor; further examples at –. Ruth Karras discusses fifteenth-century real-life parallels to the pas d’armes, the decision by knights to defend, often pointlessly, a particular place in the name of their ladies in From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe (Philadelphia, ), , , . Carolyne Larrington, ‘The Fairy Mistress: A Medieval Literary Fantasy’, in C. Sullivan and B. White, eds, Writing and Fantasy (Harlow, ), –. VV, II, –; L-G, I, –. VV, II, ; L-G, I, . Lancelot, IV, –; L-G, III, –. A slightly different account of the origin of the enchantment is given here from that narrated in the Merlin. Lancelot, I, –; L-G, II, . Lancelot, I, ; L-G, II, . Lancelot, I, –; L-G, II, . Lancelot, I, , L-G, II, –. See E. Jane Burns, ‘Ladies don’t wear braies: Underwear and Outerwear in the French Prose Lancelot’, in W.W. Kibler, ed., The Lancelot-Grail Cycle: Texts and Transformations (Austin TX, ), –, at –. Catherine Batt, ‘Malory and Rape’, Arthuriana / (), –, at . See Chapter , . The term is Sheila Fisher’s in ‘Leaving Morgan Aside: Women, History and Revisionism in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, in T.S. Fenster, ed., Arthurian Women (London



King Arthur’s Enchantresses

and New York, ), –, at . . SGGK, l. . In citations from this text yogh has been replaced by y, g or h. . For merchant values in the poem, see Jill Mann, ‘Price and Value in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Essays in Criticism  (), –, and Stephanie Trigg, ‘The Romance of Exchange’, Viator  (), –. Cf. also Richard Allen Shoaf, The Poem as Green Girdle: Commercium in ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’ (Gainesville, ). . SGGK, ll. –, my translation. . Major contributions in the debate about Morgan’s role in Gawain include: Denver E. Baughan, ‘The Role of Morgan le Fay in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, English Literary History  (), –; Charles Moorman, ‘Myth and Medieval Literature: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Medieval Studies  (), –; Albert B. Friedman, ‘Morgan le Fay in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Speculum  (), –; Angela Carson, ‘Morgain la Fée as the Principle of Unity in Gawain and the Green Knight’, Modern Languages Quarterly  (), –; Douglas Moon, ‘Clothing Symbolism in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Neuphilogische Mitteilungen  (), –; Douglas Moon, ‘The Role of Morgan la Fée in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Neuphilogische Mitteilungen  (), –; John Eadie, ‘Morgan la Fée and the Conclusion of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Neophilologus  (), –; Dennis Moore, ‘Making Sense of an Ending: Morgan le Fay in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Mediaevalia  (), –; Edith Whitehurst Williams, ‘Morgan La Fée as Trickster in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Folklore  (), –; Sheila Fisher’s two articles, ‘Leaving’ and ‘Taken Men and Token Women in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, in S. Fisher and J.E. Halley, eds, Seeking the Woman in Late Medieval and Renaissance Writings: Essays in Feminist Contextual Criticism (Knoxville TN, ), –; Geraldine Heng, ‘Feminine Knots and the Other Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Publications of the Modern Languages Association  (), –; M. Victoria Guerin, The Fall of Kings and Princes: Structure and Destruction in Arthurian Tragedy (Stanford, ), –, and Gayle Margherita, The Romance of Origins: Language and Sexual Difference in Middle English Literature (Philadelphia, ), –. . Marjory Rigby has noted that all the information Sir Gawain and the Green Knight has about Morgan could be drawn from the longer version of the Val episode, first edited by Micha in . She notes in particular the following parallels: the presence of a chapel, the warning of the guide, the information about Morgan’s relationship with Merlin and the hero’s sexual temptation; see Marjory Rigby, ‘“Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” and the Vulgate “Lancelot”’, Modern Languages Review  (), –. Michael W. Twomey, ‘Is Morgne La Faye in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight – or anywhere in Middle English?’ Anglia  (), –, points out that MS Corpus Christi College, Cambridge , containing the Vulgate Lancelot, circulated in England; he speculates that it could have been the Gawain poet’s source. Twomey also discusses the Lancelot’s links with Gawain in Michael W. Twomey, ‘Morgain la Fée in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: From Troy to Camelot’, in N.J. Lacy, ed., Text and Intertext in Medieval Arthurian Literature (New York and London, ), –. See also Robert L. Kelly, ‘Allusions to the Vulgate Cycle in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, in P. Cummins et al., eds, Literary and Historical Perspectives of the Middle Ages: Proceedings of the  SEMA Meeting (Morgantown, ), – and Roger

Notes

.

. . . . . . . .

. .

. . . . . .

. .

. .



Middleton, ‘Manuscripts of the Lancelot-Grail Cycle in England and Wales: Some Books and their Owners’, in C. Dover, ed., A Companion to the Lancelot-Grail Cycle (Cambridge, ), –. Cf. Moorman, ‘Myth and Medieval Literature’, ; for analogues to the Beheading Game, see Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: Sources and Analogues, nd edn, ed. E. Brewer (Woodbridge, ). See Fisher, ‘Leaving’, . Heng, ‘Feminine Knots’, . See – above. Rigby, ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, . SGGK, ll. , . Lancelot, I, –; L-G II, –. SGGK, ll. –. For women as the primary audience of romance, see Roberta Krueger, ‘Questions of Gender in Old French Romance’, in R.L. Krueger, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance (Cambridge, ), –, especially –; and, most recently, Sarah McNamer’s summary in ‘Lyrics and Romances’, in C. Dinshaw and D. Wallace, eds, The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women’s Writing (Cambridge, ), –, at –. Rigby, ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, . Many critics assume Gawain feels powerful desire for the lady; most recently Ad Putter, in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and French Arthurian Romance (Oxford, ),  –. Putter provides an attentive reading of the temptation scenes, arguing that Gawain’s principal desire is to save the Lady’s face, though at  he suggests that Gawain is ‘overwhelmed and inflamed’ with wiht wellande joye (l. ). This is the closest the poet comes to declaring that Gawain experiences sexual arousal; his subsequent ruminations, weighing his cortaysye, the meschef of sinning and of betraying Bertilak (ll. –) suggest that the desire, if present, has subsided. SGGK, ll. –. Cf. Heng, Feminine Knots’, . See Chapter , , and Chapter , Figure .. SGGK, l. . E.g. Moorman, ‘Myth and Medieval Literature’, . Eadie, ‘Morgain la Fée and the Conclusion’, , characterizes the enmity as ‘a sordid personal vendetta’. See Carson, ‘Morgan la Fée’, ; Baughan, ‘The Role of Morgain le Fay’; Moon, ‘The Role of Morgan la Fée’ and ‘Clothing Symbolism’. More recently, Richard Moll, Before Malory: Reading Arthur in Later Medieval England (Toronto, ), , notes the parallel between Caradoc’s appearance with the chastity mantle in the Scalachronica, with its implications of Guenevere’s future adultery with Mordred, and greeted by the Arthurian court with an unreflective laughter, and the court’s laughter at Gawain’s return in this poem. Fisher, ‘Leaving’, . Chiefly Guerin, The Fall of Kings and Princes, –; Eadie, ‘Morgan la Fée and the Conclusion’; Fisher, ‘Leaving’ and ‘Taken Men and Token Women’; Heng, ‘Feminine Knots’. Heng, ‘Feminine Knots’, . Guenevere’s emotional reaction is clear in the Lancelot; in Gawain her response is



. . . . .

. . . . . . . . . .

.

. . .

. . .

.

King Arthur’s Enchantresses suppressed, except for Arthur’s adjuration, Dere dame, to-day demay yow neuer (dear lady, do not be dismayed at all today), l. , which suggests a degree of mild perturbation. Elspeth Kennedy, Lancelot and the Grail (Oxford, ), . Lancelot, I, ; L-G, II, ; see also Kennedy, Lancelot and the Grail, –. Fisher, ‘Leaving’, . Moore, ‘Making Sense of an Ending’, ; Hans R. Jauss, ‘The Alterity and Modernity of Medieval Literature’, New Literary History  (), –, at . Lucy A. Paton, Studies in the Fairy Mythology of Arthurian Romance (Boston, ; nd edn New York, ), ; Friedman, ‘Morgan le Fay’, ; Moore, ‘Making Sense of an Ending’, . Lancelot, I, ; L-G, II, . Lancelot’s return to prison, Lancelot, I, –; L-G, II, –. Lancelot, IV, –; L-G, III, –. Lancelot, IV, ; L-G, III, . Malory, Works, I, . See Chapter . Lancelot, V, –, –; L-G, III, –, –. See Batt, ‘Malory and Rape’, for a provocative account of Lancelot’s repeated figuration as potential sexual victim. Lancelot, V, ; L-G, III, . Roger S. Loomis and Laura H. Loomis, Arthurian Legends in Medieval Art (New York and London, ), –, comment extensively on this scene, as ‘lacking in plausibility’ but being ‘not without its charm’. The episode probably derives, as Loomis and Loomis point out, from Thomas’s Tristan where the hero comforts himself by carving a likeness of Ysolt trampling a dwarf and painting other pictures reflecting episodes in the tale so far (). For an extended comparison of Gawain and Aeneas, see Alfred David, ‘Gawain and Aeneas’, English Studies  (), –. See also Margherita, Romance of Origins, in particular –. SGGK, ll. –. On traditions of Aeneas as traitor to Troy, see The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript, ed. M. Andrew and R. Waldron (York, ), . See Kennedy, Lancelot and the Grail, –; Donald Maddox, ‘Generic Intertextuality in Arthurian Literature: The Specular Encounter’, and Katalin Halász, ‘The Representation of Time and its Models in the Prose Romance’, both in N.J. Lacy, ed., Text and Intertext in Medieval Arthurian Literature (New York and London, ), – and – respectively. See especially  and –, and see  above. Lancelot, V, ; L-G, III, . Lancelot, V, ; L-G, III, . Hallewes the Sorseres, Malory, Works, I, –; Batt, ‘Malory and Rape’, here –; Perlesvaus, ed. W. Nitze and T. Atkinson Jenkins,  vols (Chicago, ), I, –, –; II, , ; The High Book of the Grail: Perlesvaus, trans. N. Bryant (Cambridge, ), –, –. See Janet Knepper, ‘A Bad Girl Will Love You to Death’, in B. Wheeler and F. Tolhurst, eds, On Arthurian Women: Essays in Memory of Maureen Fries (Dallas TX, ), –.

Notes



. See Chapters  and . . On this kind of ‘remembrance’, see Paul Rockwell, ‘Remembering Troie: The Implications of ymages in the Roman de Troie and the Prose Lancelot’, Arthuriana / (), –. . See Lancelot, II, –; and Chrétien de Troyes, Le Chevalier de la charrete, ed. M. Roques (Paris, ), ll. –. . See Chapter  for Morgan’s enduring and conflicted obsession with Lancelot. . See Harf-Lancner, Les Fées, Chapter  above; and Charles Méla, ‘Life in La Mort le roi Artu’, in C. Baswell and W. Sharpe, eds, The Passing of Arthur: New Essays in Arthurian Tradition (New York and London, ), –, at –. . Harf-Lancner, Les Fées, . The fourteenth century, as the next chapter will argue, sees Morgan rather differently. Cf. Michael W. Twomey, ‘Morgan le Fay at Hautdesert’, in Wheeler and Tolhurst, eds, On Arthurian Women, –. . Putter, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and French Arthurian Romance, –. Putter argues that romance from Chrétien to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight aims to inculcate clerical values of courtesy, self-control and enthusiasm for learning in secular men.

Chapter  . TP, II, –. Cf. Eilert Löseth, Le Roman en Prose de Tristan, Le Roman de Palamède et la Compilation de Rusticien de Pise: Analyse critique d’après le manuscrits de Paris (Paris, ; repr. Geneva, ) §§ –. . Plan to exhibit corpse: TP, II, . . Gawain’s accidental beheading of lady: Malory, Works, I, –, cf. also Sir Pedivere’s deliberate beheading of his own lady, Lancelot, IV, –, –; L-G, III, –, –; Malory, Works, I, –; Elaine, Malory, Works, II, –; Perlesvaus, ed. W. Nitze and T. Atkinson Jenkins,  vols (Chicago, ), I, –; –; II, , . Hallewes the Sorseres, Malory, Works, I, –. On Hallewes, see Janet Knepper, ‘A Bad Girl Will Love You to Death’, in B. Wheeler and F. Tolhurst, eds, On Arthurian Women: Essays in Memory of Maureen Fries (Dallas TX, ), –. For a lucid discussion of Hallewes and Pedyvere, see Catherine Batt, Malory’s Morte Darthur: Remaking Arthurian Tradition (New York and London, ), –. See also Chapter , –. . Morgan’s grief, TP, II, . . TP, II, –; Löseth, Roman en Prose de Tristan, §§ –. . TP, II, . . Arrival at Morgan’s to conclusion of Tournament, TP, III, –. Löseth, Roman en Prose de Tristan, §§ –. . TP, III, . . TP, III, –; see Chapter ,  for the outcome of the tournament. . TP, III, –. . TP, III, . . See Donald Maddox, ‘Generic Intertextuality in Arthurian Literature: the Specular Encounter’, in N.J. Lacy, ed., Text and Intertext in Medieval Arthurian Literature (New York and London, ), –. . TP, III, .

 . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . .

. . . . .

. . .

King Arthur’s Enchantresses TP, III, . TP, III, . TP, IX, . Emmmanuelle Baumgartner, Le Tristan en prose: essai d’interprétation d’un roman médiéval (Geneva, ), . See Chapter , . See Chapter , –, for Morgan’s magic horn. Morgan’s establishment of the evil custom at the Castle of Ten Knights, directed against Lancelot, but ended triumphantly by Lamerok, is considered in Chapter . La Tavola Ritonda, ed. E. Trevi (Milan, ) (hereafter TR); Tristan and the Round Table, trans. A. Shaver (Binghamton NY, ) (hereafter TR trans.), –. Shaver translates La Tavola Ritonda, ed. L.F. Polidori,  vols (Bologna, –); the Trevi edition is based on Polidori’s text. For a general history of Arthurian literature in Italian, see Edmund Gardner, The Arthurian Legend in Italian Literature (London and New York, ); for a substantial analysis of the Tavola Ritonda, see Daniela Branca, I Romanzi Italiani di Tristan e la Tavola Ritonda (Florence, ). See Chapter , –, and Figure . in Chapter  and Figure . in Chapter . See Branca, I Romani Italiani di Tristan, –, for the changes made to the ‘split shield’ episode. TR, ; TR trans., . Branca, I Romanzi Italiani di Tristan, –. Branca, I Romanzi Italiani di Tristan, . TR, –; TR trans., –. Cf. Löseth §. TR, –; TR trans., –. For the Ponzela Gaia, see Gardner, Legend, – and TR, –. Trevi notes that the Ponzela has little to do with the Tristan material; references to her story are simply inserted in passing. TR, –/TR trans.,  notes that Calvano (Gawain) has recently stolen the Ponzela from Morgana, presumably a reference to Calvano’s rescue of his beloved from Morgana’s water-filled dungeon (see below, and Branca, I Romanzi Italiani di Tristan, –). TR, ; TR trans., . TR, –; TR trans., –. Cf. Löseth §§–; here §a better reflects the version of the tournament known to the Tavola author. TR, –; TR trans., –. Gardner, Arthurian Legend, , notes that in the sixteenth-century Venetian I Due Tristani Morgan makes an unsuccessful attempt to seduce Tristan. Other enchantresses in the Tavola Ritonda include: the Savia Donzella, who kidnaps Tristan’s father Meliadus; the Dama del Isola di Vallone, Escorducarla, whose enchanted armour and lance nearly bring down Camelot; and her daughter Elergia, who enchants Arthur. The Dama del Isola di Vallone is known from the Prophesies de Merlin (see below), though her activities there do not equal the machinations of Escorducarla. Elergia is an elaboration of the anonymous sorceress in some Tristan en Prose MSS. (Löseth §a), appearing in Malory as Aunowre (Works, II, –). On the Lady’s behaviour here, see Branca, I Romanzi Italiani di Tristan, . TR, –; TR trans., –; this episode seems to be an independent narrative invention. The threat to burn Morgan: TR, ; TR trans., . TR, ; TR trans., . Tristan’s connection with hunting is a constant throughout

Notes



the Tristan texts. . Wounds inflicted by Morholt’s weapon could only be healed by his sister, the Queen of Ireland. Tristan’s wound thus brings him to the Irish court, where he meets Yseult. . TR, –; TR trans., . . TR, ; TR trans., . The source here is the Mort Artu. . Works, I, –. . Works, II, –, –. . Malory temporarily adopts the Tristan en Prose’s understanding of Morgan as daughter of Uther rather than of the Duke of Cornwall; later, where the French Morgan tells Tristan that the symbols on the strange shield had been used by her father, Uther, Malory’s Morgan supplies no history for the device. . Tristan at Morgan’s castle: Works, II, –. . Works, II, . . Works, II, . . Death of Hemyson: Works, II, –; death of Tristram: III, . . Works, III, . . Works, II, –. . Lancelot, II, ; L-G, III, . . See Chapter , . . This poem is edited as La Ponzela Gaia, most recently by G. Varanini (Bologna, ). There is also a prose version in Florence, National Library II, IV, ,  r and v, from the beginning of the fourteenth century; see Branca, I Romanzi Italiani di Tristan,  n,  n. See also Gardner, Arthurian Legend, –. . La Ponzela Gaia, v . . La Ponzela Gaia, v . . La Ponzela Gaia, v . . The motif of daring to kiss the monster is known as the Fier Baiser. See Roger S. Loomis, ‘The Fier Baiser in Mandeville’s Travels, Arthurian Romance and Irish Saga’, Studi Medievali  (), –. Release from serpent form is frequently, if not exclusively, associated with Gawain and his lineage; cf. Renaut de Bâgé, Le Bel Inconnu (Li Biaus descouneüs; the Fair Unknown), ed. K. Franco, trans. C.P. Donagher (New York and London, ), –; and Lybeaus Desconnus, ed. M. Mills (Oxford, ), –. For Kemp Owyne, see The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, ed. F.J. Child,  vols (repr. New York, ), I, no. . . The Ponzela’s troubles with knights are not limited to Gawain’s careless talk; in the Tavola Ritonda she is kidnapped by a certain Burletta di Diserta, who is on the point of ravishing her when he is interrupted by Lancelot. Her father, Onesun, is able to rescue her. Later Burletta meets Tristan, to whom he recounts this story. Tristan agrees that Lancelot had clearly done Burletta a great disservice, but challenges the knight who is seeking Lancelot to avenge the interrupted rape. After they have fought, Tristan grants Burletta his life on condition he submit to Lancelot as prisoner. Preferring death to this fate, Burletta hurls himself into a river and drowns. TR, –; TR trans., –. . Gardner, Arthurian Legend, –. Cf. Laurence Harf-Lancner, Les Fées au moyen âge (Paris, ), –. . See Chapter , –.



King Arthur’s Enchantresses

. Summarized in Prophecies, I, –. Morgan’s employment of demons here, together with her household’s experience of terrible noise caused by the invocation of evil spirits for magical purposes, points to a theological understanding of magic in terms of the control of spirits (see Chapter ). . For Alexander’s dealings with Morgan, see Prophesies, –; –; –; see also Alixandre l’Orphelin: A Prose Tale of the Fifteenth Century, ed. C. Pickford (Manchester, ), . On Alexander in the Tristan en Prose, see Baumgartner, Le Tristan en prose, –. . See Alixandre, ed. Pickford, –. . Myra Olstead, ‘Morgan le Fay in Malory’s “Morte Darthur”’, BBIAS  (), –, at . Malory’s version is in Works, II, –. . See Mary Wack, Lovesickness in the Middle Ages: The ‘Viaticum’ and Its Commentaries (Philadelphia, ), –. For Guiomar, see Chapter , –. . Alixandre, ed. Pickford, –. Ruth Karras notes fifteenth-century real-life parallels to the pas d’armes, in From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe (Philadelphia, ), , , . See also Richard J. Moll, Before Malory: Reading Arthur in Later Medieval England (Toronto, ), , for a ‘fairy damsel’ who issues a similar challenge to Sir William Marmion in the name of his lady. . Prophesies, ; Alixandre, ed. Pickford, . . Prophesies, ; Alixandre, ed. Pickford, –. See also Helen Cooper, The English Romance in Time (Oxford, ), , on ‘the reciprocal intensity’ of Malory’s treatment of Aylies and Alexander. . Prophesies, ; Alixandre, ed. Pickford, . . Harf-Lancner, Les Fées, . . Cedric Pickford, ‘Morgan le Faye in the Prophecies de Merlin’, BBIAS  (), . . Prophesies, –. . Prophesies, –. . Prophesies, . . Prophesies, –. . Prophesies, –. Lamorat is rendered here as l’amiraus de Gales (the admiral of Wales); his name is given correctly in MS, Rennes, Bibliothèque Municipale, , see Prophécies, I, . . Prophesies, . . Lancelot, I, –; L-G, II, –. . Prophesies, –. . Prophécies, I, , . . Prophesies, ; see Prophecies, I, , for extinction of fire; I, , for its kindling. . Anne Berthelot, ‘La Dame du Lac, Sebile l’Enchanteresse, La Dame d’Avalon … et quelques autres’, in D. Buschinger, ed., Europäische Literatur im Mittelalter: Mélanges en l’honneur de Wolfgang Spiewok (Greifswald, ), –, at . . Baumgartner, Le Tristan en prose, . . Jaufré, ed. C. Brunel (Paris, ). Morgan’s connection with Montgibel, a name derived from the Arabic djebel, meaning ‘mountain’ and normally referring to Etna, originates in the early tradition that Arthur sleeps in a cave beneath Etna. See Gervase of Tilbury, Otia Imperialia , ed. and trans. S.E. Banks and J.W. Binns,  vols (Oxford, ), II, ; Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus Miraculorum, ed. J. Strange,

Notes

. . . . . .

.

. .



 vols (Cologne, ), XII, ; Wolfgang Fauth, ‘Fata Morgana’, in K. Baldinger, ed., Beiträge zum Romanischen Mittelalter (Tübingen, ), –; Harf-Lancner, Les Fées, –. Floriant et Florete, ed. H.F. Williams (Ann Arbor and London, ). Harf-Lancner, Les Fées, –. Floriant et Florete, ed. Williams, ll. –. Harf-Lancner, Les Fées, –. For MSS of the poetic version, see Harf-Lancner, Les Fées,  n; the prose versions are listed in n. Harf-Lancner, Les Fées, –, gives a more detailed summary. Ogier le Danois in Jean d’Outremeuse, Ly Myreur des histors: fragment du seconde livre, années –  , ed. A. Goosse (Brussels, ); Ogier le dannoys, facsimile of Antoine Vérard  edition, ed. K. Togeby (Copenhagen, ). Though Holger dansker is now largely forgotten (except in Denmark where he gave his name to a resistance group in the Second World War), William Morris retells his story in the Earthly Paradise (see Chapter , ). Huon de Bordeaux, ed. P. Rouelle (Paris, ); Esclarmonde in Esclarmonde, Clarisse et Florent, Yde et Olive, ed. M. Schweigel (Marburg, ); Harf-Lancner, Les Fées, –, –. For Esclarmonde’s baptism into the world of Fairy, see ll. –. Jeanne Wathelet-Willem, ‘La fée Morgain dans la chanson de geste’, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale  (), – at . Roberta L. Krueger, ‘Desire, Meaning and the Female Reader: The Problem in Chrétien’s Charrete’, in C. Baswell and W. Sharpe, eds, The Passing of Arthur: New Essays in Arthurian Tradition (New York and London, ), –.

Chapter  . The identification of the Lady of the Lake and Viviane/Niviene/the damoiselle cacheresse will be discussed further below. The Prophesies name a third enchantress, the Dame d’Avalon, as a former pupil of Merlin; see Chapter , –. Important discussions of Viviane and Merlin include Lucy A. Paton, Studies in the Fairy Mythology of the Arthurian Romance (Boston ; rev. R.S. Loomis, ), –; Ernst Brugger, ‘“L’enserrement Merlin”: Studien zur Merlin Saga’, Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Literatur  (), –;  (), –;  (), –;  (), –;  (), –;  (), –; Paul Zumthor, Merlin le prophète: un thème de la littérature polémique de l’historiographie et des romans (Lausanne, ); Laurence Harf-Lancner, Les Fées au moyen âge: Morgane et Mélusine: la naissance des fées (Paris, ), –. . Prophesies, . All translations from the Prophesies are my own. . Suite, I, –; L-G, IV, –. See also Malory, Works, III, , and SGGK, ll. –. . Nathalie Koble, ‘Le chevalier au tombeau: pèlerinages à la tombe prophétique dans le Prophesies de Merlin de Richart d’Irlande’, in D. Hüe and C. Ferlampin-Acher, eds, Le Monde et l’Autre Monde: Actes du colloque arthurien de Rennes ( –  mars ) (Orléans, ), –, at . . Geoffrey of Monmouth, Vita Merlini, ed. and trans. B. Clark (Cardiff, ). . VV, II, –; L-G, I, –.



King Arthur’s Enchantresses

. Merlin: roman en prose du XIIIe siècle, ed. A. Micha (Geneva, ). . The Didot-Perceval, According to the Manuscripts of Modena and Paris, ed. W. Roach (Philadelphia, ), –; Merlin and the Grail: Joseph of Arimathea, Merlin, Perceval: The Trilogy of Arthurian Romances attributed to Robert de Boron, trans. N. Bryant (Cambridge, ), ; VV, VII, . . For discussion of the esplumoir, see William A. Nitze, ‘The Esplumoir Merlin’, Speculum  (), –; A.C.L. Brown, ‘The Esplumoir and Viviane’, Speculum  (), –; Roger S. Loomis, ‘The Esplumoir Merlin’, BBIAS  (), –. . Susan L. Smith, The Power of Women: A Topos in Medieval Art and Literature (Philadelphia, ), , notes the pairing of Aristotle and Merlin by Brunetto Latini in . The Aristotle story probably just predates the earliest version of the Merlin enclosure. . See Domenico Comparetti, Vergil in the Middle Ages, trans. E.F.M. Benecke (Princeton,  []), –; Smith, The Power of Women, –. . Comparetti, Vergil in the Middle Ages, –, gives a full account of Virgil as a magician; see – for his adventure with the daughter of the emperor of Rome. Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, ), , recalls that Virgil is active in medieval romance tradition. . Jean Markale, Merlin l’enchanteur (Paris, ), . . Robert Polhemus, Lot’s Daughters: Sex, Redemption and Women’s Quest for Authority (Stanford, ) is an intelligent account of the dynamic between the old man and the young woman; though Polhemus does not mention Merlin and his lover, his argument that the relationship goes beyond senescent lust on the one hand and exploitative sexual acquiescence on the other is highly relevant here. . Contrast, for example, Nimuë in Mary Stewart’s The Last Enchantment, and see Chapter , . . On the various forms of the names of Merlin’s lover, see William A. Nitze, ‘An Arthurian Crux: Viviane or Niniane’, Romance Philology  (), –; Eric P. Hamp, ‘Viviane or Niniane? A Comment from the Keltic Side’, Romance Philology  (–), ; M. Rousse, ‘Niniane en Petite Bretagne’, BBIAS  (), –. . Lancelot do Lac: The Non-cyclic Old French Prose Romance, ed. E. Kennedy (Oxford, ), ; VV, III, –, at ; Lancelot, VI, –; L-G, II, . . Merlin: roman en prose du XIIIe siècle, ed. G. Paris and J. Ulrich,  vols (Paris, ), xlvi. . Lancelot do Lac, ed. Kennedy, . . Lancelot do Lac, ed. Kennedy, . . Ulrich von Zatzikhoven, Lanzelet, ed. and trans. W. Spiewok (Greifswald, ), ll. , ; Lanzelet, trans. G.T. Webster, rev. with notes, R.S. Loomis (New York, ). See further discussion of this text below, and in Matthias Meyer, ‘Das defizitäre Wunder – Die Feenjugend des Helden’, in F. Wolfzettel, ed., Das Wunderbare in der arthurischen Literatur (Tübingen, ), –. . Anne Berthelot, ‘From Niniane to Nimuë: Demonizing the Lady of the Lake’, in B. Wheeler and F. Tolhurst, eds, On Arthurian Women: Essays in Memory of Maureen Fries (Dallas, ), –, here at . See also Anne Berthelot, ‘Le Lac de Lancelot’ in Hüe and Ferlampin-Acher, eds, Le Monde et l’Autre Monde, –. . Harf-Lancner, Les Fées, . Although the combination of the virginity motif and the Diana legend in the Suite de Merlin appears to have been the work of the Suite author,

Notes

. . .

. . . . . . . . . .

. .

. .

. .

.

. .

.



the chastity motif is already present in the Lancelot, and the lake is already known as the lac de Diane. See Zumthor, Merlin le prophète, ; Kennedy, Lancelot and the Grail, –. Lancelot do Lac, ed. Kennedy, . For the Estoire account of Merlin’s relations with Viviane, see VV, II, –, , –; L-G, I, –, , –. For the Post-Vulgate Suite de Merlin version, see Suite, I, –; II, –; L-G, IV, –, –. VV, II, ; L-G, I,  VV, II, ; L-G, I, . VV, II, ; L-G, I, . The L-G translation treats this as an authorial comment rather than as a refrain. VV, II, ; L-G, I, , and see Chapter , –. VV, II, ; L-G, I, . VV, II, –; L-G, I, . VV, II, ; L-G, I, . VV, II, ; L-G, I, . VV, II, ; L-G, I, . For the ‘sybilline utterances’ of the courtly lady in male-authored texts, see Toril Moi, ‘Desire in Language: Andreas Capellanus and the Controversy of Courtly Love’ in D. Aers, ed., Medieval Literature: Criticism, Ideology and History (Brighton, ), –, in particular –. Zumthor, Merlin le prophète, ; VV, II, ; L-G, I, . VV, II, ; L-G, I, . Bea Lundt, Melusine und Merlin im Mittelalter: Entwürfe und Modelle weiblicher Existenz im Beziehungs-Diskurs der Geschlechter (Munich, ), , –. Lundt, Melusine und Merlin, –. See Chapter , –. Harf-Lancner, Les Fées, , also aligns the enclosure with the Val sans Retour type. However, she argues for a ‘morganien’, originally Celtic narrative motif, the retention of a lover in an Other World by a supernatural woman, rather than for an urgent and contemporary view of gender roles. Lundt, Melusine und Merlin, . Lundt, Melusine und Merlin, –, argues that the Estoire version of the enclosure narrative delineates Merlin as a new masculine type, the intellectual, who does not participate directly in chivalry, since he does not fight, and is thus the readier to abandon the public world for the private sphere. VV, II, ; L-G, I, . See Harf-Lancner, Les Fées, , for the argument that the Diana motif represents a learned transformation of the folkloric origin of Viviane as a Celtic fairy. Cf. also Paton, Studies in the Fairy Mythology,  ff.; and compare Flualis’s dream and Merlin’s interpretation of it, VV, II, –; L-G, I, . Lundt, Melusine und Merlin, . See the articles mentioned in n above. On the Chaldean connection, see Berthelot, ‘From Niniane to Nimüe’, . The name’s meaning in Chaldean occurs only in one manuscript. L-G, I,  follows other manuscripts that give ‘Welsh’ here. See Lundt, Melusine und Merlin, –. Berthelot, ‘From Niniane to Nimüe’, , points out that the Estoire account fails to bridge the gap with the Lancelot which it is supposed to introduce: the chronology of the birth and abduction of Lancelot given in there will not fit.

 . . . . . . .

.

. . . . .

. . . .

. .

. . . .

. . . .

King Arthur’s Enchantresses Suite, I, –; L-G, IV, –. Suite, I, ; L-G, IV, . Suite, I, ; L-G, IV, . Suite, I, ; L-G, IV, . Suite, I, ; L-G, IV, . Suite, I, ; L-G, IV, . Harf-Lancner, Les Fées, , points out the parallel with Marie de France’s Equitan. Compare also the behaviour of Morgan’s nameless lover earlier in the Suite when the counterfeit Excalibur fails him (Suite, I, –; L-G, IV, –; and see Chapter , . Fanni Bogdanow, The Romance of the Grail:A Study of the Structure and Genesis of a Thirteenth-century Arthurian Prose Romance (Manchester and New York, ), , notes the care with which the text explains the Lancelot’s underwater manor and how the damoiselle becomes interested in the infant Lancelot (cf. Malory, Works, III, –). Suite, I, ; L-G, IV, . See Chapter , –. Suite, I, ; L-G, IV, . Suite, II, ; L-G, IV, . The text suggests that deliverance may come with the lady revisiting the tomb with Tristan in the lost Conte du Brait, or possibly the Tristan en Prose, but no such episode is recounted there; see Suite II, ; L-G, IV,  n. Suite, II, –; L-G, IV, . Bogdanow, Romance of the Grail, . Zumthor, Merlin le prophète, . H.O. Sommer, ed., Die Abenteuer Gawains, Ywains, und le Morholts mit den drei Jungfrauen … nach der allein bekannten HS Nr.  der Pariser National Bibliothek herausgegeben, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie  (), ; L-G, V, . See L-G, V,  for other appearances of the Lady’s damsels in the rest of the Suite. VV, VII,  –, –, ; Emile Freymond, ‘Beiträge zur Kenntnis der altfranzösischen Artusromane in Prosa’, Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Literatur  (), –. See also Frederick Whitehead and Roger S. Loomis, ‘The Livre d’Artus’, in R.S. Loomis, ed., Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages (Oxford, ), –. VV, VII, ; and see Chapter . VV, VII, –. VV, VII, . Harf-Lancner, Les Fées, , plausibly suggests that the absence of the Lady of the Lake as a pole of goodness in the Livre d’Artus means that the characterization of Niniane in this text is attracted towards the character of Morgan, lecherous and exploitative of Merlin, so that the two characters function as doubles of one another. Cf. also Berthelot, ‘From Niniane to Nimüe’, . VV, VII, . Lundt, Melusine und Merlin, . Prophécies de Merlin, ed. L.A. Paton; Prophesies de Merlin, ed. A. Berthelot. Berthelot, ‘From Niniane to Nimüe’,  suggests that the Lady’s main role in the Prophesies is to introduce Méliadus as Merlin’s posthumous mouthpiece. For a

Notes

. . . .

.

. . . . . . . .

.

. . . .

. .

. . .

.



thoughtful discussion of Méliadus’s role as a hybrid ‘chevalier-clerc’ in the Prophesies, see Koble, ‘Le chevalier au tombeau’. Cf. the accounts of Gawain’s childhood examined in Chapter ; these – and Tristan and Lancelot’s youthful experiences – are sources for Méliadus’s infancy. Prophesies, . Prophesies, . Prophesies, . This is a well-known international proverb; see Mineke Schipper, Never Marry a Woman with Big Feet: Women in Proverbs from around the World (New Haven and London, ), –, for comparators. Prophesies, . In MS Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal , the accusation of slander follows the debate about the significance of the white serpent and Merlin’s Solomonic and misogynist outburst, a better-motivated order; see Prophécies, I, –. See Koble, ‘Le chevalier au tombeau’, –. Prophesies, . The Lady admits her regrets to Méliadus before he visits Merlin in MS Bibliothèque Nationale, Fr. ; see Prophecies, I, . Prophécies, I, . Prophécies, I, –; see also Les Prophesies de Merlin de , facsimile, ed. C. Pickford (London, ), fols. liiii–lv. Prophécies, I, –; see also Les Prophesies de Merlin de , ed. Pickford, fol. cxlviii. Prophécies, I, . See Mishtooni Bose, ‘From Exegesis to Appropriation: The Medieval Solomon’, Medium Aevum  (), –, for Solomon’s mixed fortunes in the medieval period. For different views of the significance of the Lady’s lover, as proof that she has no amorous intentions towards her charge in the Lancelot, see Kennedy, Lancelot and the Grail, ; or as a socialized fairy, see Harf-Lancner, Les Fées, –. Koble, ‘Le chevalier au tombeau’, –. Malory, Works, I, –. Malory, Works, I, . Sue Ellen Holbrook, ‘Nymue, the Chief Lady of the Lake, in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur’, in T.S. Fenster, ed., Arthurian Women (New York and London, ), –, argues that, apart from the minor lady beheaded by Balin in Works, I, –, a single character, whom, following Caxton, she calls Nymue, can be traced through the work. Gaining Excalibur: Malory, Works, I, –; death of Lady, I, –. Here I follow Helen Cooper, The English Romance in Time (Oxford, ), , , who reckons on two Ladies in Malory: the donor of Excalibur, murdered by Balin; and the nemesis of Merlin, Nenyve, who subsequently succeeds to the title. Suite, I, –; death of lady, I, –. L-G, IV, –; . Rescue of Arthur, Malory, Works, II, –; Poisoned Apple, II, . Holbrook, ‘Nymue, the Chief Lady of the Lake’; Geraldine Heng, ‘Enchanted Ground: The Feminine Subtext in Malory’, in T.S. Fenster, ed., Arthurian Women (New York, ), –, especially –. Die Abenteuer Gawains, ed. Sommer, –; L-G, V, –; Malory, Works, I, –.



King Arthur’s Enchantresses

. Malory, Works, I, . Catherine Batt, Malory’s Morte Darthur: Remaking Arthurian Tradition (New York and London: Palgrave, ), , comments of Nyneyve’s actions here, ‘she elides enchantment, moral, social and poetic justice, and, above all, self-interest … deploying like Merlin, a moral vocabulary to her own ends’. See also Cooper, English Romance in Time, ; Malory, Works, III, . For Vinaver’s comments on Malory’s alterations of his French source, see III, –, and also Heng, ‘Enchanted Ground’, . . Die Abenteuer, ed. Sommer, ; L-G, V, . . Chrétien de Troyes, Le Chevalier de la Charrete, ed. M. Roques (Paris, ), ll. –. . For the Other World enfances as defective in Lanzelet, though markedly not in the Lancelot, see Meyer, ‘Das defizitäre Wunder’. . Lanzelet, ed. W. Spiewok. For discussion of dates and sources, see Nicola McLelland, Ulrich von Zatzikhoven’s Lanzelet: Narrative Style and Entertainment (Woodbridge, ), –. It is not clear whether Ulrich knew of Chrétien’s version of the story in which Lancelot becomes Guenevere’s lover. Since Arthur is not Lancelot’s uncle in any other text, there is a suspicion that the blood relationship, with the consequence that an affair with Guenevere would be incestuous as well as adulterous, may have been invented in order to make plausible the absence of the affair in Lanzelet. . This is pre-eminently a feature of chanson de geste, see Chapter , , and Chapter , –. . Cf. Malory, Works, I, –; and see Jeff Rider, ‘The Other Worlds of Romance’, in R.L. Krueger, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance (Cambridge, ), –, here at  for discussion of the horn and mantle motifs; see also Chapter , . . Lancelot, VII, –; VV, III, –; Lancelot do Lac, ed. Kennedy, –; L-G, II, –. . See Chapter , , and Harf-Lancner, Les Fées, –, and compare Arthur’s childhood in Layamon, Layamon’s Arthur: The Arthurian Section of Layamon’s Brut, ed. W.R.J. Barron and S.C. Weinberg (Exeter, ), ll. –. . Lancelot do Lac, ed. Kennedy, . . Lancelot, VII, –; VV, III, –; L-G, II, –, and see Chapter , –. . Lancelot, VII, –; VV, III, –; Lancelot do Lac, ed. Kennedy, –; L-G, II, –; Lancelot, VII, ; VV, III, –; Lancelot do Lac, ed. Kennedy, –; L-G, II, . . Lancelot, VII, –; VV, III, ; Lancelot do Lac, ed. Kennedy, –; L-G, II, –. . Lancelot, VII, ; L-G, II, . . See Meyer, ‘Das defizitäre Wunder’, –. . Harf-Lancner, Les Fées, ; for a substantial analysis of the Lady’s subsequent interventions in Lancelot’s life, see Kennedy, Lancelot and the Grail, –. . Lancelot, VII, ; VV, III, ; Lancelot do Lac, ed. Kennedy, ; L-G, II, . . Lancelot, VII, –; VV, III, –; Lancelot do Lac, ed. Kennedy, ; L-G, II, . See Chapter , , for the Tavola Ritonda’s ascription of this shield to Morgan and Chapter , , for an illustration of its healing powers. . See Kennedy, Lancelot and the Grail, –. . Madness after leaving Morgan’s prison: Lancelot, II, ; VV, IV, ; L-G, III, .

Notes



Madness at Galehaut’s tomb: Lancelot, II, –; VV, IV, –; L-G, III, –. . Lancelot, VI, –; L-G, III, –. . Lady’s lover: Lancelot, VIII, –; Lancelot do Lac, ed. Kennedy, ; L-G, II, . Marriage of Lady: Lancelot, VI, ; L-G, III, . . Harf-Lancner, Les Fées, . . Lancelot, VII, ; L-G, II, . . Lancelot, VII, –; L-G, II, –. . Lancelot, VI, ; L-G, III, . . Malory, Works, II, –; II, . . Prophesies, ; Prophécies, I, , and see Chapter , .

Chapter  . Edmund Gardner, The Arthurian Legend in Italian Tradition (London and New York, ), . . Malory, Works, II, . . Catherine Batt, Malory’s Morte Darthur: Remaking Arthurian Tradition (New York and London, ), . . In some modern Arthurian narratives, the queen shares the magical knowledge of her sister; see Chapter  below. . See Historia Regum Britanniae: First Variant Version: A Critical Edition, ed. N. Wright (Cambridge, ), , , – for references to Anna, or to the mother of Walwanus. . Generally on Anna, see Madeleine Blaess, ‘Arthur’s sisters’, BBIAS  (), –. . For discussion of Arthurian recognition scenes, see Elizabeth Archibald, ‘Comedy and Tragedy in Some Arthurian Recognition Scenes’, in K. Busby and R. Dalrymple, eds, Comedy in Arthurian Literature, Arthurian Literature  (Woodbridge, ), –, though this scene is not discussed. . The Rise of Gawain Nephew of Arthur (De Ortu Waluuanii nepotis Arturi), ed. and trans. M. Leake Day (New York and London, ), –. . Perlesvaus, ed. W. Nitze and T. Atkinson Jenkins,  vols (Chicago, ), I, –, at . The High Book of the Grail: Perlesvaus, trans. N. Bryant (Cambridge, ), –. . Perlesvaus, ed. Nitze and Jenkins, I, . For an insightful discussion of this scene, see Donald Maddox, ‘Generic Intertextuality in Arthurian Literature: The Specular Encounter’, in N.J. Lacy, ed., Text and Intertext in Medieval Arthurian Literature (New York and London, ), –, at –, . . The queen also appears under this name in Li chevalier as deus éspées, ed. W. Foerster (Halle, ), l. ; and Heinrich von dem Türlîn, Diu Crone (c. ), ed. G. Scholl (Stuttgart, ), l. . . Enfances de Gauvain, ed. P. Meyer, Romania  (), –. See also Trioedd Ynys Prydein: The Welsh Triads, ed. R. Bromwich (Cardiff, ), –; and Elizabeth Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination (Oxford, ), –. . The story was widely known from its inclusion in the Gesta Romanorum, ed. H. Oesterley (Berlin, ), –. The Gregorius story features double incest; the



. . . . . . . . . . . .

. . .

. . . . .

. .

.

King Arthur’s Enchantresses recognition scene occurs only after Gregorius has inadvertently married his mother. For extensive discussion, see James Douglas Bruce, Historia Meriadoci and De Ortu Waluuanii (Göttingen and Baltimore, ), xli ff.; Perlesvaus, ed. Nitze and Jenkins, II, ; and Archibald, Incest, –. VV, II, ; L-G, I, . VV, II, –; L-G, I, –. VV, II, –; L-G, I, –. Rosemary Morris, The Character of King Arthur in Medieval Literature (Cambridge and Totowa NJ, ), . VV, II, –; L-G, I, , for Galescalain’s resolution to follow Arthur; VV, II, –; L-G, I, –, for Yvain’s defection. For the sister’s-son relationship, see Thomas J. Garbáty, ‘The Uncle–Nephew Motif: New Light into its Origins and Development’, Folklore  (), –. VV, II, –; L-G, I, –. VV, II, – at ; L-G, I, –, at . This is the phrase used in the L-G translation (I, ). The phrase in the Estoire text (leires traitres) lacks a specific reference to the Saxon’s religion. VV, II, –; L-G, I, –. VV, V, –; Lancelot, V, –; L-G, III, –. See Elizabeth Archibald, ‘Arthur and Mordred: Variations on an Incest Theme’, Arthurian Literature VIII (), –; for discussion of the chronology of the Vulgate and its implications, see Helen Cooper, ‘Counter-Romance: Civil Strife and Father Killing in the Prose Romances’, in H. Cooper and S. Mapstone, eds, The Long Fifteenth Century: Essays for Douglas Gray (Oxford, ), –, in particular –; Archibald, Incest, –; and now Miranda Griffin, ‘Writing out the Sin: Arthur, Charlemagne and the Spectre of Incest’, Neophilologus  (), –. MA, ; L-G IV, . Lancelot, V, ; VV, V, ; L-G, III, . See Wendy Doniger, The Bed-Trick: Tales of Sex and Masquerade (Chicago, ), though she does not discuss the Arthurian bed tricks per se; Morris, Character, ; see also Rosemary Morris, ‘Uther and Igerne: A Study in Uncourtly Love’, in Arthurian Literature IV, ed. R. Barber (Cambridge, ), –. L’Estoire del Saint Graal, ed. J.-P. Ponceau (Paris, ), ; L-G, I, . Griffin, ‘Writing out the Sin, . VV, II –; L-G, I, . Morris, Character, . See Archibald, Incest, –; and Fanni Bogdanow, The Romance of the Grail: A Study of the Structure and Genesis of a Thirteenth-century Arthurian Prose Romance (Manchester and New York, ), –, but see also  for comments on the Cambridge MS of the Suite and the queen’s motivation there, and Roussineau’s summary in Suite, I, xlix. Suite, I, ; L-G, IV, . L-G IV, . On the concept of ‘adventure’ in the Post-Vulgate but chiefly in Malory, see Jill Mann, ‘“Taking the Adventure”: Malory and the Suite du Merlin’, in T. Takamiya and D. Brewer, eds, Aspects of Malory (Cambridge, ), –. For a full history of the Beast, see Lynette R. Muir, ‘The Questing Beast: Its Origins and Development’, Orpheus  (), –; and William A. Nitze, ‘The Beste Glatis-

Notes



sante in Arthurian Romance’, Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie  (), –. . A parallel between Merlin and Mordred, born under anomalous circumstances and with some doubt as to their true natures, is thus made. . Suite, I, –; L-G, IV, –. . Suite, I, –; L-G, IV, –. . Malory, Works, I, . . Dorsey Armstrong, ‘Malory’s Morgause’, in B. Wheeler and F. Tolhurst, eds, On Arthurian Women: Essays in Memory of Maureen Fries (Dallas TX, ), –; Malory, Works, I, . . Merlin’s prophecy: Malory, Works, I, ; death of children: Works, I, –. . Both the Winchester manuscript and Caxton promise that the return of Mordred to the court will be narrated, ‘towarde the ende of the Morte Arthure’. . Cooper, ‘Counter-Romance’, –, especially ; and now Cooper, The English Romance in Time (Oxford, ), –. . Peter J.C. Field, ‘Malory’s Mordred and the Morte Arthure’, in P.J.C. Field, Malory’s Texts and Sources (Cambridge, ), –, at : ‘Arthur, rather than … Mordred begins to look like Antichrist’. . See Archibald, ‘Comedy and Tragedy’, for the suppression of any recognition scene involving Mordred, and the substitution of other recognition scenes, here the meeting of Arthur and Ygerne, but also Gareth (see below, –). The reunion of Arthur and his mother is found at Suite, I, –; L-G, IV, –; Malory, Works, I, –. . See MA, –; L-G, IV, ; A Demanda do Santo Graal, ed. A. Magne,  vols, nd edn (Rio de Janeiro, –) II, –; L-G, V, –. . See Archibald, ‘Arthur and Mordred’, and Incest, –; –. . Morris, Character, –. . Bogdanow, Romance, . . Archibald, Incest, . . David Scott Wilson-Okamura, ‘Adultery and the Fall of Logres in the Post-Vulgate Suite du Merlin’, Arthuriana / (), –; Armstrong, ‘Malory’s Morgause’. . See M. Victoria Guerin, ‘The King’s Sin: The Origins of the David–Arthur Parallel’, in C. Baswell and W. Sharpe, eds, The Passing of Arthur: New Essays in Arthurian Tradition (New York, ), –; Morris, ‘Uther and Igerne’. . Suite, I, –; L-G IV, –; Malory, Works, I, . Beverly Kennedy, ‘Adultery in Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur’, Arthuriana / (), –, argues that since Lot has already rebelled, Arthur feels no particular loyalty towards him. . Roussineau, Suite, I, xx, notes that the feud between Lot’s and Pellinor’s lineages is another unhappy consequence of Arthur’s incest; had Pellinor not saved Arthur by killing Lot, at the battle of Tarrabel, where he had allied himself with Rions and Nero, the feud would not have come about. . Maureen Fries, ‘Commentary’, Arthuriana / (), –. . La Folie Lancelot: A Hitherto Unidentified Portion of the Suite du Merlin, ed. F. Bogdanow, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie  (Tübingen, ), xxv. . PV, III, –; L-G, V, –. See also Bogdanow, Romance of the Grail, –; and Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination, –. . Arrival of Morgause: Malory, Works, I, –. . Archibald, ‘Comedy and Tragedy’. . Folie, ed. Bogdanow, –; L-G, V, .



King Arthur’s Enchantresses

. Lot’s funeral: Suite, I, –; L-G, IV, ; Gawain’s knighting: Suite, I, –; L-G IV, –. . Folie, ed. Bogdanow, ; L-G, V, . . Folie, ed. Bogdanow, ; L-G, V, . . The madman’s prophecy: Suite, II, ; L-G, V, . . Death of queen: Folie, ed. Bogdanow, –; L-G, V, –. . TP, IV, . . TP, IV, . . This brother is dissimilar enough to the Gareth of the Morte Darthur to make it difficult to identify them meaningfully; I retain the name he bears in French. . Aftermath of killing of queen: Folie, ed. Bogdanow, –; L-G, V, –. . Folie, ed. Bogdanow, ; L-G, V, . . TP, IV, –. . Death of Lamerok: Bogdanow, Folie, –; L-G, V, –. . Gaheris and Bademagu: Die Abenteuer Gawains, Ywains, und le Morholts mit den drei Jungfrauen … nach der allein bekannten HS Nr.  der Pariser National Bibliothek herausgegeben, ed. H.O. Sommer, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie  (), –; L-G, V, –. The Post-Vulgate author suggests that the adultery belongs properly to the story of Bademagu, and is related in the Brait; therefore he does not relate it here. Though the Brait is often mentioned by Arthurian authors, it has not survived and the story of Bademagu and Pellinor’s wife is not preserved elsewhere. . TP, IV, . . For an intelligent discussion of homoerotic behaviour in chivalric contexts, see Richard E. Zeikowitz, Homoeroticism and Chivalry; Discourses of Male Same-Sex Desire in the th Century (New York and London, ), in particular –. . Malory, Works, II, –; TP, IV, –. . Works, II, –; based on Eilert Löseth, Le Roman en Prose de Tristan, Le Roman de Palamède et la Compilation de Rusticien de Pise: Analyse critique d’après le manuscrits de Paris (Paris, ; repr. Geneva, ), §a, found in MS BN, fr.  and . See Le Roman de Tristan, ed. R.L. Curtis,  vols (Cambridge, ), III, –; The Romance of Tristan, trans. R.L. Curtis (Oxford, ), –. . Malory here differs from the French texts, which suggest that the queen lodges at the Castle Roche Naïve (TP, IV, ) because it is more convenient for her to see Lamerok there than in her own realm. . Death of Morgause: Works, II, –; Gawain’s discussion with his brothers: II, . . Malory, Works, I, . . Malory, Works, II, –. . TP, .

Chapter  . Thomas Hughes’s drama, The Misfortunes of Arthur () returns in part to Geoffrey of Monmouth for its plot. Mordred is the incestuously begotten son of Arthur and Anna, but the latter does not appear in the play. See The Misfortunes of Arthur: A

Notes



Critical, Old-spelling Edition, ed. B.J. Corrigan (New York and London, ). . Morgana in Matteo Maria Boiardo, Orlando Innamorato, ed. and trans. C.S. Ross (Berkeley, ), Book II, viii, –; ix, –. . For Falerina, see Orlando Innamorato, ed. Ross, Book I, xvii, –; II, iii, ; iv, –; v, –; for Dragontina, see Orlando Innamorato, ed. Ross, I, vi, –; ix, –; x, –; xiv, –; and see Julia Kisacky, Magic in Boiardo and Ariosto (New York, ), –. . Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, ed. L. Caretti (Milan, ); trans. G. Waldman (Oxford, ), Cantos vi–vii; x. . The love has in fact been magically induced in her by Atlante, Ruggiero’s tutor and guardian, but it is nonetheless real so far as Alcina is concerned. See Kisacky, Magic, –. . See Handel’s  opera Alcina, where the female knight Bradamante comes to rescue her bewitched lover Ruggiero from Alcina. Morgana, Alcina’s sister, falls in love with the disguised Bradamante, and Ruggiero fears she is a rival for Alcina’s love. The lovers’ escape destroys Alcina’s powers. . Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, ed. A.C. Hamilton (London and New York, ), II, i, –. . Spenser, Faerie Queene, ed. Hamilton, II, xii, . . Spenser, Faerie Queene, ed. Hamilton, II, xii, . . Spenser, Faerie Queene, ed. Hamilton, II, xii, – recounts Guyon and the Palmer’s experience in the Bower; sts – describe Acrasia and Verdant, while the remainder of the canto tells of Acrasia’s capture and the rescue of her victims. Her dispatch to the Faerie Queene’s court is in III, i,  . On Acrasia’s role in this Book, see Zailig Pollock, ‘Concupiscence and Intemperance in the Bower of Bliss’, Studies in English Literature / (), –. Guyon’s violent destruction of the Bower is discussed in Harriet Hawkins, Poetic Freedom and Poetic Truth: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Milton (Oxford, ), –. . Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning from More to Shakespeare (Chicago, ), –, at . . See Sheila Cavanagh, Wanton Eyes and Chaste Desires: Female Sexuality in The Faerie Queene (Bloomington and Indianapolis, ), –. . See Nicholas von Maltzahn, Milton’s History of Britain: Republican Historiography in the English Revolution (Oxford, ), –, and – for Milton’s engagement with the Arthurian legend. . For a general account of the rise of medievalism in late-eighteenth and nineteenthcentury Britain, see Mark Girouard, The Return to Camelot: Chivalry and the English Gentleman (New Haven and London, ). . Stephanie Barczewski, Myth and National Identity in Nineteenth-Century Britain: The Legends of King Arthur and Robin Hood (Oxford, ), –, –, –. Debra Mancoff, The Arthurian Revival in Victorian Art (New York and London, ), –, gives a good overview of the relationship between nineteenth-century Arthurianism and the Gothic Revival. . The Most Ancient and Famous History of the Renowned Prince Arthur King of Britaine, printed by W. Stansby (London, ). . The text was in fact missing eleven leaves, so Southey’s collaborator added the missing portion from Stansby, vitiating the marketing claim that the new edition was



.

. . . . . .

.

. . . . .

.

. . . . . . . .

King Arthur’s Enchantresses complete and unexpurgated. For a full account of the publishing history of the Morte Darthur, see Malory: The Critical Heritage, ed. M.J. Parins (London and New York, ); and Barry Gaines, Sir Thomas Malory: An Anecdotal Bibliography of Editions, – (New York, ), –. This was the  three-volume edition of Antoine Vérard’s  text, incorporating the Estoire in two volumes, and the Prophécies de Merlin in the third. See Merlin: , intro. C. Pickford (London, ). The Byrth, Lyf and Actes of King Arthur By Sir Thomas Malory, edited with introduction and notes by Robert Southey,  vols (London, ), I, xliii. The Byrth, Lyf and Actes, ed. Southey, I, xlvi. Merlin:  (fol. clxiiii); The Byrth, Lyf and Actes, ed. Southey, I, xlvi. Théodore de la Villemarqué, ‘Visite au tombeau de Merlin’, Revue de Paris, nd ser.,  (May ), –. Robert D. Buchanan, ‘Merlin’s Tomb’, Glasgow University Album for , –. Charles Louandre, ‘L’Enchanteur Merlin’, Revue de Paris, rd ser.  (April, ), –, at . Tennyson also knew de la Villemarqué; when he visited Brittany in  he considered calling on him. See Hallam Tennyson, Alfred Lord Tennyson, A Memoir,  vols (New York and London, ), II, . See Mark Cumming, ‘Allegory and Comedy in Bulwer-Lytton’s King Arthur’, in D. Mancoff, ed., The Arthurian Revival: Essays on Form, Tradition and Transformation (London and New York, ), –. Edward Bulwer-Lytton, King Arthur,  vols (London, ), I, Book I, lxi. William Morris, The Earthly Paradise (London, ), –. Morris, Earthly Paradise, . See Robert Polhemus, Lot’s Daughters: Sex, Redemption and Women’s Quest for Authority (Stanford, ). Matthew Arnold, ‘Tristram and Iseult’, in The Complete Poems, nd edn, ed. M. Allott (London and New York, ), –; for the ‘Merlin and Vivian’ section, see ll. –. M.B. Davis, ‘A Source for Arnold’s Tale of Merlin and Vivian’, English Language Notes  (), –, identifies both de la Villemarqué and Louandre as among Arnold’s sources both for the story of Vivian and (in de la Villemarqué’s Les Poèmes Gallois in an  number of the Revue) for the Tristan story. Paull F. Baum, Ten Studies in the Poetry of Matthew Arnold (Durham NC, ), . Though the Tristan en Prose makes Tristan and Arthur contemporaries, Tristan and Iseult are normally thought to be of the generation after Arthur. Barbara Fass Leavy, ‘A New Interpretation of Matthew Arnold’s Tristram and Iseult’, in T.S. Fenster, ed., Arthurian Women (New York and London, ), –. Elisabeth Brewer and Beverly Taylor, The Return of King Arthur (Cambridge, ), . Letter to Herbert Hill,  November , in Letters of Matthew Arnold, ed. C.Y. Lang,  vols (Charlottesville and London, –), I, . John Sterling, ‘Poems by Alfred Tennyson’, Quarterly Review  (), –, at . Mancoff, Arthurian Revival, . Georgiana Burne-Jones, Memorials,  vols (London, ), I, . Tennyson ultimately had cause to be grateful to Burne-Jones; the detachment of the name Nimuë

Notes

.

. . .

. . . .

. .

. .

. . . . .



(which Tennyson understood as meaning ‘the Gleam’) from the Merlin story made it possible to figure a disembodied ‘Gleam’ as the inspiration of both the wizard and himself as poet in his posthumously published ‘Merlin and the Gleam’. See Gordon S. Haight, ‘Tennyson’s Merlin’, Studies in Philology  (), –, at , –. See Beverly Taylor, ‘Re-Vamping Vivien: Reinventing Myth as Victorian Icon’, in D.N. Mancoff, ed., King Arthur’s Modern Return (New York and London, ), –, for discussion of the Doré engraving and a summary of Vivien’s appearances in art and literature in the nineteenth century. All citations from Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King, ed. J.M. Gray (Harmondsworth, ). Here ‘Merlin and Vivien’, ll. –. ‘Merlin and Vivien’, ll. –. ‘Merlin and Vivien’, ll. –. For the allusions to Paradise Lost, see William W. Bonney, ‘Torpor and Tropology in Tennyson’s ‘Merlin and Vivien’, Victorian Poetry  (), –. John D. Rosenberg, The Fall of Camelot: A Study of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King (Cambridge MA, ), . ‘Merlin and Vivien’, ll. –. ‘Merlin and Vivien’, ll. –. For the sexual sense of ‘spent’, ‘ejaculated’, see Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. ‘spent’. See also Steven Marcus, The Other Victorians: A Study of Sexuality and Pornography in Mid-Nineteenth Century England (London, ). ‘Merlin and Vivien’, ll. –. See Rebecca Umland, ‘The Snake in the Woodpile: Tennyson’s Vivien as Victorian Prostitute’, in M.B. Shichtman and J.P. Carley, eds, Culture and the King: The Social Implications of the Arthurian Legend (New York, ), –, and bibliography; Judith Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class and the State (Cambridge, ), –. Letters of Alfred Lord Tennyson, ed. C.Y. Lang and E.F. Shannon Jr,  vols (Oxford, –), II, . Robert Williams Buchanan, ‘The Fleshly School of Poetry: Mr D.G. Rossetti’, The Contemporary Review  (August–November ), –; Algernon Swinburne, Under the Microscope (), –. Cited from Tennyson: Critical Heritage, ed. John D. Jump (London, ), . William Acton, Prostitution Considered in its Moral, Social and Sanitary Aspects in London and Other Large Cities, nd edn (London, ), viii. ‘To the Queen’, l. . Jerome Hamilton Buckley, Tennyson: The Growth of a Poet (Cambridge MA and London, ), –. See Taylor, ‘Re-Vamping Vivien’; and Thomas P. Adler, ‘The Uses of Knowledge in Tennyson’s Merlin and Vivien’, Tennessee Studies in Literature  (), –. For the contemporary plight of governesses, middle-class women who had to support themselves, but who were woefully undereducated, see M. Jeanne Peterson, ‘The Victorian Governess: Status Incongruity in Family and Society’, in M. Vicinus, ed., Suffer and Be Still: Women in the Victorian Age (London, ), –. Their situation was ameliorated by the founding of women’s teacher-training colleges in –. See also Jane McDermid, ‘Women and Education’, in J. Purvis, ed., Women’s History, Britain  –, (London, ), –, particularly –.

 . . . .

. . . . .

.

. . . . . .

. . . . . . . .

.

. . .

King Arthur’s Enchantresses Taylor, ‘Re-Vamping Vivien’, . See Christopher Ricks, Tennyson (New York and London, ), . ‘Merlin and Vivien’, ll. –. See Umland, ‘The Snake in the Woodpile’; Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society, –. While Tennyson was making these revisions, prostitution had become even more central as a topic of public debate, in the wake of the campaign against the Contagious Diseases Acts of ,  and . ‘Merlin and Vivien’, l. . ‘Balin and Balan’, ll. –. ‘Balin and Balan’, ll. , . ‘Guinevere’, ll. –. William Holman Hunt, Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood,  vols (London, ), I, –. See also Muriel Whitaker, The Legends of King Arthur in Art (Woodbridge, ), –. Joanne Lukitsh, ‘Julia Margaret Cameron’s Photographic Illustrations to Alfred Tennyson’s The Idylls of the King’, in T.S. Fenster, ed., Arthurian Women (New York and London, ), –. ‘A Reminiscence of Mrs Cameron by a Lady Amateur’, The Photographic News, January , –. Lukitsh, ‘Julia Margaret Cameron’s Photographic Illustrations’, –. Lukitsh, ‘Julia Margaret Cameron’s Photographic Illustrations’, . Taylor, ‘Revamping Vivien’, –. See n. For full accounts of Arthurian art in the nineteenth century, see Whitaker, The Legends of King Arthur; Christine Poulson, The Quest for the Grail: Arthurian Legend in British Art  – (Manchester and New York, ); and Debra Mancoff, The Return of King Arthur: The Legend through Victorian Eyes (New York, ). This account of the murals project largely follows John Christian, The Oxford Union Murals (London and Chicago, ). Georgiana Burne-Jones, Memoirs, I, , ; The Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, ed. O. Doughty and J.R. Wahl,  vols (Oxford, –), I, . Coventry Patmore, ‘Walls and Wall Painting at Oxford’, Saturday Review / ( December ), –. Poulson, The Quest for the Grail, . For the story of Pelleas and Ettard, see Chapter , –. Poulson, The Quest for the Grail, . Christian, Oxford Union Murals, –. For Sandys’s biography, see Douglas Schoenherr, ‘The Spectacular Rise – and Sad Decline – of Frederick Sandys’, in B. Elzea, ed., Frederick Sandys,  –: A Catalogue Raisonné (Woodbridge, ), –; for a full account of the paintings see Elzea’s catalogue in the same work. Sandys, his characteristics split between a drunken church organist and Cyril, the Bohemian painter-cousin of the hero, and a Gypsy girl based on Keomi are memorably depicted in Theodore Watts-Dunton’s  novel Aylwin. City Art Gallery, Birmingham. City Art Gallery, Birmingham. Schoenherr, ‘Spectacular Rise’, .

Notes . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . .

. . . .

. . . . . . . . .



Whitaker, Legends of King Arthur, –. ‘Vivien’ in City Art Gallery, Manchester. Art Journal, ‘The Royal Academy’,  June , –, at . J.M. Gray, ‘Frederick Sandys’, Art Journal, March , – at  Esther Wood, ‘Being a Consideration of the Art of Frederick Sandys’, The Artist,  November , –, at . Schoenherr, ‘Spectacular Rise’, . Wood, ‘A Consideration’, . Whitaker, Legends of King Arthur, –. Algernon C. Swinburne, Notes on the Royal Academy , part II (London, ), –. Schoenherr, ‘Spectacular Rise’, ; Elzea, Frederick Sandys, . Georgiana Burne-Jones, Memoirs I, –. The Byrth, Lyf and Actes, ed. Southey, I, xxix; Carole Silver, ‘Victorian Spellbinders: Arthurian Women and the Pre-Raphaelite Circle’, in C. Baswell and W. Sharpe, eds, The Passing of Arthur: New Essays in Arthurian Tradition (New York and London, ), –, at . Georgiana Burne-Jones, Memoirs, I, . Whitaker, Legends of King Arthur, . Penelope Fitzgerald, Edward Burne-Jones (London, ; reprinted Stroud, ), –. Letter to Helen Mary Gaskell, February . Cited from Fitzgerald, Edward BurneJones, . The watercolour is one of the thirty-eight roundels in Burne-Jones’s Flower Book in the British Library, published in a limited edition by the Fine Art Society in . See Edward Burne-Jones, Flower Book, with an essay by Gabriele Uerscheln (Cologne, ) and Taylor, ‘Re-Vamping Vivien’, . See Poulson, The Quest for the Grail, , for an illustration. The watercolour is in a private collection. Museo Ponce de Leon, Puerto Rico. Fitzgerald, Burne-Jones, . Burne-Jones’s relationships with such younger women, including in particular his important confidante Helen Gaskell, exemplifies the older man–younger woman relationship discussed in Polhemus, Lot’s Daughters. ‘Oxford and Wall Painting’, Building News,  January , . Annamarie Stapleton, John Moyr Smith  –: A Victorian Designer (Shepton Beauchamp, ), –. Samuel Orchart Beeton, The Coming K—: A Set of Idyll Lays (London, ). The series was reprinted from Beeton’s Christmas Annual. For Tintagel as a tourist destination, see Barczewski, Myth and National Identity, –; see also Chapter , –, for the Glastonbury tourist industry. Beeton, Coming K—, . Beeton, Coming K—, . Ralph MacLeod Fullarton, Merlin: A Dramatic Poem (Edinburgh and London, ). See Chapter , . MacLeod Fullarton, Merlin, .



King Arthur’s Enchantresses

. James Comyns Carr, King Arthur: A Drama in a Prologue and Four Acts (London, ). See also Jennifer R. Goodman, ‘The Last of Avalon: Henry Irving’s King Arthur of ’, Harvard Library Bulletin / (), –. . See www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/wills.html for David Howland’s summary and assessment of Wills’ play. . King Arthur, Act I, . . King Arthur, Act I, . . Letter to Helen Gaskell,  January , cited from Fitzgerald, Edward Burne-Jones, . . The Times,  January , . . Clement Scott, Daily Telegraph,  January . . G. Bernard Shaw, ‘King Arthur’, The Saturday Review,  January , –. . The Times,  January , . . Fitzgerald, Burne-Jones, . . For a full account of the genesis of Albéniz’s Merlin, see Walter A. Clark, ‘King Arthur and the Wagner Cult in Spain: Isaac Albéniz’s Opera Merlin’, in R. Barber, ed., King Arthur in Music (Cambridge, ), –. . Compare the twentieth-century composer Rutland Boughton’s establishment of the Glastonbury Festival for the staging of Celtic-themed and Arthurian operas to match Wagner’s Bayreuth (Chapter , ). . Brewer and Taylor, Return of King Arthur, ; Isaac Albéniz, Merlin (Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid, conductor José de Eusebio, Decca, ). Jacinto Torres, ‘Isaac Albéniz’s Elusive Grail’, in CD insert booklet, . . The Teatro Real de Madrid’s production of Merlin is now available on DVD from BBC/Opus Arte (). . A.S. Byatt, Possession (London, ); cited here from the Vintage edition (), . Although the Merlin–Nimuë theme is chiefly associated with Blanche’s perception of the relationship, Ash composes a poem ‘The Incarcerated Sorceress’ (). When Christabel retreats to Brittany, close to Brocéliande, variations in the narrative of Merlin and Vivien are briefly explored (–).

Chapter  . King Arthur, dir. Antoine Fuqua, prod. Jerry Bruckheimer, . . For some indication of the volume of Arthurian material published in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, see Cindy Mediavilla, Arthurian Fiction: An Annotated Bibliography (Lanham MD, ) or www.softworx.com/cbobbitt/novel. htm. . Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court (New York, ). . See Elisabeth Brewer and Beverly Taylor, The Return of King Arthur (Cambridge, ), –, for critical discussion of Twain’s novel. . Twain introduced the change of surname in his final version; Brewer and Taylor, The Return, . . Citations from Twain, A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court, ed. J. Kaplan (Harmondsworth, ), here at . . Twain, Connecticut Yankee, .

Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . .

.

. . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . .

. .



Twain, Connecticut Yankee, . Twain, Connecticut Yankee, , , . Brewer and Taylor, The Return, . Sylvia Townsend Warner, T.H. White: A Biography (London, ), –. Brewer and Taylor, The Return, . See also Elisabeth Brewer, T.H. White’s The Once and Future King (Cambridge, ). Terence Hanbury White, The Sword in the Stone (London, ). Brewer, T.H. White, –. White, The Sword in the Stone, . White, The Sword in the Stone, . White, The Sword in the Stone, . White, The Sword in the Stone, . The Sword in the Stone, dir. Wolfgang Reitherman, script by Bill Peet, . Maureen Fries, ‘How to Handle a Woman, or Morgan at the Movies’, in K.J. Harty, ed., King Arthur on Film: New Essays on Arthurian Cinema (Jefferson NC and London, ), –, at , notes the misogyny of White’s treatment of Morgan in The Once and Future King, and of Disney’s Mim. On the Disney Sword in the Stone, see for substantial analysis Raymond H. Thompson, ‘The Ironic Tradition in Arthurian Films’, in K.J. Harty, ed., Cinema Arthuriana (New York, ), –, in particular –. Terence Hanbury White, The Witch in the Wood (London, ), . White, The Witch in the Wood, . White, The Witch in the Wood, , and see Brewer, T.H. White, –. White, The Witch in the Wood, . White, The Witch in the Wood, . Sigmund Freud, ‘A Child is Being Beaten: A Contribution to the Study of the Origin of Sexual Perversions’ (), in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. and trans. J. Strachey,  vols (London, –), , –. White, The Witch in the Wood, –. Brewer, T.H. White, . T.H. White, The Once and Future King (London, ), –. White, The Once and Future King, –. White inserts some translated verses from the Old Irish Vision of Mac Conglinne here; White, The Once and Future King, . Morgan’s griffins, now under the control of queen Mab, make a surprise appearance in Steve Barron’s Merlin, discussed below. White, The Once and Future King, –; compare Chapter , –. White, The Once and Future King, –. White, The Once and Future King, . White, The Once and Future King, . Brewer, T.H. White, . The Crystal Cave (London, ); The Hollow Hills (London, ); The Last Enchantment (London, ); The Wicked Day (London, ). All following citations are from Coronet paperback editions. Stewart, The Hollow Hills, –. Geoffrey of Monmouth uses the tradition in the Vita Merlini.



King Arthur’s Enchantresses

. Stewart, The Last Enchantment, –, for massacre of babies; – for Morgause’s poison and Merlin’s madness. . Attempted seduction of Mordred: see Stewart, Wicked Day, –. . Stewart, Wicked Day, . . Stewart, Wicked Day, . . Stewart, Wicked Day, . . Stewart, Wicked Day, . . See Stewart’s interview with Raymond P. Thompson at www.lib.rochester.edu/ camelot/intrvws/stewart.htm. . Marion Wynne Davies, Women and Arthurian Literature: Seizing the Sword (London, ), . Chapter eight gives a thoughtful account of Stewart, Zimmer Bradley and Jane Yolen’s Arthurian novels. . Mike Barr and Brian Bolland, Camelot  (London, ) is the graphic novel version of the maxiseries. See Charles Wood, ‘Camelot  and the Future of Arthur’, in M.B. Shichtman and J.P. Carley, eds, Culture and the King: The Social Implications of the Arthurian Legend (Albany, ), –. . Barr and Bolland, Camelot  , ch. , . . See Chapter . . Barr and Bolland, Camelot  , ch. , –. . Barr and Bolland, Camelot  , ch. , –. Wood, ‘Camelot ’, . Arthur dies in this incarnation, but Merlin assures us that the cycle will continue: ch. , – shows an alien creature drawing Excalibur from the rubble. . See Chapter , –. . See www.montypythonsspamalot.com/HighBand/SpamOperaHome.html. The show is reviewed by Kevin Harty, Debra Mancoff, and Bonnie Wheeler in Arthuriana / (), –, –. . Monty Python and the Holy Grail, dir. Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, ; Graham Chapman, Terry Jones et al. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (London, ), . On the scene with Dennis, see David R. Day, ‘Monty Python and the Medieval Other’, in Harty, ed., Cinema Arthuriana, –, especially –; and Richard H. Osberg and Michael E. Crow, ‘Language Then and Language Now in Arthurian Film’, in K.J. Harty, ed., King Arthur on Film: New Essays on Arthurian Cinema (Jefferson, NC and London, ), –, especially  n. . Information from ‘The Book of Eric Idle’ at www.montypythonsspamalot.com/HighBand/SpamOperaHome.html. See also Ben Brantley, ‘Monty Python’s Spamalot’, New York Times,  March : ‘the tastiest satiric juice is provided by Ms. Ramirez, who plays Arthur’s buxom but ethereal love interest’. . The Lady has a substantial role in The Mists of Avalon, dir. Uli Edel (), see below. . For a full account of the various film versions, see Kevin J. Harty, The Reel Middle Ages: American, Western and Eastern European, Middle Eastern and Asian Films about Medieval Europe (Jefferson NC and London, ), –; and Kevin J. Harty, ‘Camelot Twice Removed: Knightriders and the Film Versions of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court’, in Harty, ed., Cinema Arthuriana, –. For Morgan in the Connecticut Yankee films, see Maureen Fries, ‘How to Handle a Woman, or Morgan at the Movies’, –. Fries’s article includes a fine photograph of Myrna Loy as Morgan.

Notes



. On the history of Arthurian musical comedy, see William A. Everett, ‘King Arthur in Popular Musical Theatre and Musical Film’, in R. Barber, ed., King Arthur in Music (Cambridge, ), –. . See www.lorenzhart.org/alivesng.htm. . Excalibur, dir. John Boorman, screenplay by Rospo Pallenberg and John Boorman, . Jacqueline de Weever, ‘Morgan and the Problem of Incest’, in K.J. Harty, ed., Cinema Arthuriana (New York, ), –, at . For a full history of Morgan in film to , see Fries, ‘How to Handle a Woman’. . Michel Ciment, John Boorman, trans. G. Adair (London, ), , . . De Weever, ‘Morgan’, . For Morgana and ‘gaze theory’, see Fries, ‘How to Handle a Woman’, –. ‘Morgana is never a free observer but captive by what she sees (or mis-sees): herself a picture, she at the same time becomes the object of sight for the gaze of the filmgoer’ (). . The spell is apparently Old Irish, ‘Anáil nathrach, ortha bháis bheatha, do thuar dhéanamh’ (Serpent’s breath, charm of death and life, thy omen of making); the film’s pronunciation is close, but not identical to reconstructed Old Irish (www.imdb. com/title/tt/trivia). Osberg and Crow, ‘Language Then and Language Now in Arthurian Film’, are doubtful as to the linguistic accuracy of Boorman’s rendition however; see  n. . Ciment, John Boorman, . Ciment regards the dragon as ‘an emblem of life and goodness’, but it seems rather a reservoir of neutral magical power – like Excalibur itself – which can be harnessed for good or evil. As Merlin says, ‘Here everything is possible. Everything meets its opposite.’ . De Weever, ‘Morgan’, . . De Weever, ‘Morgan’, . . Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon (New York and London, ); citations here are from the  Penguin edition. . See Raymond H. Thompson, ‘The First and Last Love: Morgan le Fay and Arthur’ in D. Mancoff, ed., The Arthurian Revival (New York and London, ), –. . Bradley, The Mists of Avalon, . . Viviane is killed by Balin because she has been instrumental in his mother’s death, but here it is a question of euthanasia. See Chapter ,  for the Lady’s death in the Suite and Malory. . See Carrol L. Fry, ‘The Goddess Ascending: Feminist Neo-Pagan Witchcraft in Marian [sic] Zimmer Bradley’s Novels’, Journal of Popular Culture, / (), –. . Bradley, The Mists of Avalon, , . . Bradley follows the now largely forgotten early-twentieth-century occultist and novelist Dion Fortune in deriving Avalon’s cult from Atlantis. See Diana L. Paxson, ‘Marion Zimmer Bradley and The Mists of Avalon’, Arthuriana  (), –, especially –. . See Davies, Women in Arthurian Literature, –, for a critique of Bradley’s gender politics; cf. Maureen Fries, ‘Trends in the Modern Arthurian novel’, in V. Lagorio and M. Leake Day, eds, King Arthur Through the Ages,  vols (New York and London, ), II, –. . Bradley, The Mists of Avalon, . . Fry, ‘The Goddess Ascending’, , notes the similarities between Morgaine’s



.

. .

.

. . . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . .

King Arthur’s Enchantresses assumption of the Goddess and the rites described in Margo Adler, Drawing Down the Moon (Boston, ). In ‘My Search for Morgaine le Fay’, in M. Pors, ed., The Vitality of the Arthurian Legend: A Symposium (Odense, ), –, Bradley suggests that her source was primarily Malory, and she shows little awareness of French sources, as her suggestion that Malory invented the character of Lancelot indicates (). Bradley, The Mists of Avalon, –. Davies, Women in Arthurian Literature, , suggests that Bradley’s work has been less influential than Stewart’s on succeeding writers, but Bradley has certainly been enormously important for broader cultural interpretation of Morgan and her fellow-enchantresses. See for example www.angelfire.com/realm/amethystbt/ladyigraine.html; Gareth Knight, The Secret Tradition in Arthurian Legend (Wellingborough, ), –, –, –. The Mists of Avalon, dir. Uli Edel. Cited here from the amended and expanded edition, Robert Graves, The White Goddess (London, ). Graves, The White Goddess, –. Sir James Frazer, The Golden Bough, rd edn (London, ). Graves, The White Goddess, , –, , . See Doreen Valiente, The Rebirth of Witchcraft (London, ). See Margaret Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (London, ), and The God of the Witches (London, ). Murray has been discredited in academic circles; for a judicious summary of the history of post-war Goddess religion, see Rosemary Ellen Guiley, ‘Witchcraft as Goddess Worship’, in C. Larrington, ed., The Feminist Companion to Mythology (London and San Francisco, ), –. Starhawk, The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess, th anniversary edn (San Francisco,  []). See Elinor W. Gadon, The Once and Future Goddess (London, ), –, for a representative summary of the twentieth-century history of Goddess thinking. See, for example, Marija Gimbutas, The Language of the Goddess: Unearthing the Hidden Symbols of Western Civilisation (London, ). Starhawk, Spiral Dance, . Starhawk, Spiral Dance, . Starhawk, Spiral Dance, . Though there is no etymological connection between the two names, and though the mythological functions of the Morrígan make historical identification with Morgan problematic, the two figures are now inextricably linked. For discussion of the etymological relations of Morgan and Modron, see Rachel Bromwich, Trioedd Ynys Prydein (Cardiff, ), –. www.mysticalmind.com/Shadows/ezine/celtic/LunarZodiacWillow.htm. Graves, The White Goddess, . Gerald Gardner, The Meaning of Witchcraft (London, ), . See in particular Caitlín Matthews, Arthur and the Sovereignty of Britain: King and Goddess in the Mabinogion (London, ), a book which ranges further than its title suggests, identifying Morgan and Morgause as versions of the Celtic Sovereignty Goddess, and Morgan with the Morrígan; also Caitlín and John Matthews, Ladies of the Lake (London, ). For enchantress-related ritual and meditation, see Caitlín

Notes



Matthews, The Elements of the Goddess (Shaftesbury, ). . See Robert Dunning, King Arthur in the West (Stroud and New York, ),  for the earliest textual association of Arthur and Glastonbury in Caradoc of Llancarfan’s Life of St Gildas. . Robert Dunning, Glastonbury: History and Guide (Stroud and Dover NH, ), –. . See conveniently Michael Hurd, ‘Rutland Boughton’s Arthurian Cycle’, in R. Barber, ed., King Arthur in Music (Cambridge, ), –; Michael Hurd, ‘Rutland Boughton’s Arthurian Cycle’, in D. Mancoff, ed., The Arthurian Revival: Essays on Form, Tradition and Transformation (London and New York, ), –. For more detail on Boughton in Glastonbury, see Michael Hurd, Rutland Boughton and the Glastonbury Festivals (Oxford, ), –. . Reginald Ramsden Buckley, Arthur of Britain (London, ). Boughton made many alterations to Buckley’s text in the final versions of the operas, however, and the last two, Galahad and Avalon, bear no resemblance to Buckley’s Holy Grail and Death of Arthur (Hurd, ‘Boughton’s Arthurian Cycle’, ). . Space does not permit a discussion of Harrison Birtwistle’s important opera Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, first performed at Covent Garden in  and in a revised version in . David Harsent’s libretto brought Morgan back from the poem’s margins, and made her ‘the principal driving force of the piece’. See Robert Adlington, ‘“Good Lodging”: Birtwistle’s Sir Gawain’, in Barber, ed., King Arthur in Music, – at . . Buckley, Arthur of Britain, . . Dunning, Glastonbury, ; Hurd, Rutland Boughton, –. . John Cowper Powys, A Glastonbury Romance (London, ). . Dunning, Arthur the King in the West, –. . Kathy Jones, The Goddess in Glastonbury (Glastonbury, ), now available online at www.kathyjones.co.uk/glastonburygoddess.html. . www.goddesstemple.co.uk/season/vision.html. . www.goddessconference.com/. . See Marion Bowman, ‘Procession and Possession in Glastonbury: Continuity, Change and the Manipulation of Tradition’, Folklore / (), –, at . . www.goddessconference.com/index_.html, and see Chapter . . See, for example, as late as , this comment: ‘There have always been many women in the Arthurian legend but they have never been anything but lifeless cardboard cutouts possessing no individuality of their own.’ Christopher Dean, The Lady of the Lake in Arthurian Legend (Lampeter, ), .

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

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Websites www.angelfire.com/realm/amethystbt/ladyigraine.html. www.goddessconference.com/. www.goddessconference.com/index_.html. www.goddesstemple.co.uk/season/vision.html. www.imdb.com/title/tt/trivia. www.kathyjones.co.uk/glastonburygoddess.html. www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/intrvws/stewart.htm. www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/wills.html. www.lorenzhart.org/alivesng.htm. www.montypythonsspamalot.com/HighBand/SpamOperaHome.html. www.mysticalmind.com/Shadows/ezine/celtic/LunarZodiacWillow.htm. www.softworx.com/cbobbitt/novel.htm.

Film and Television A Connecticut Yankee, dir. David Butler (). The Knights of the Round Table, dir. Richard Thorpe (). The Sword in the Stone, dir. Wolfgang Reitherman, script by Bill Peet (). Monty Python and the Holy Grail, dir. Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones (). Excalibur, dir. John Boorman, script by Rospo Pallenberg and John Boorman (). First Knight, dir. Jerry Zucker, script by Lorne Cameron, David Hoselton et al. (). The Mists of Avalon, dir. Uli Edel, script by Gavin Scott (). King Arthur, dir. Antoine Fuqua, script by David Franzoni ().

List of Pictures and Sources

Figure . Figure . Figure . Figure . Figure . Figure . Figure . Figure . Figure . Figure . Figure . Figure . Figure .

Morgan steals Lancelot’s magic ring. (London, British Library, Additional MS , fol. . By permission of the British Library.) Iseult drinks from the magic horn. (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale MS français , fol. . Reproduced by permission.) Lancelot’s madness is healed by Lady of Lake’s shield; the Lady anoints him with healing unguent. (New York, Pierpont Morgan Library MS , fol. . Photo, Scala Florence.) Arthur looks at the pictures. (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale MS français  (), fol. v. Reproduced by permission.) Lancelot in the Valley of False Lovers. (New York, Pierpont Morgan Library MS , fol. . Photo, Scala Florence.) The sleeping Lancelot is captured by queens. (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale MS français , fol.v. Reproduced by permission.) Morgan gives Tristan the shield. (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale MS français , fol. v. Reproduced by permission.) Morgan’s demoiselle asks Tristan for the spear. (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale MS français , fol. v. Reproduced by permission.) Mark fatally wounds Tristan. (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale MS français (), fol. . Reproduced by permission.) Brehus, Morgan and Sebile. (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale MS français , fol. . Reproduced by permission.) Niviene and Merlin meet two enchanters. (London, British Library, Additional , fol. . By permission of the British Library.) Niviene has her retainers place Merlin in the tomb. (London, British Library, Additional , fol. v. By permission of the British Library.) Lancelot abducted by the Lady of the Lake. (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale MS français , fol. v. Reproduced by permission.)

 Figure . Figure . Figure . Figure . Figure . Figure . Figure . Figure . Figure . Figure . Plate  Plate  Plate  Plate  Plate  Plate  Plate  Plate  Plate  Plate  Plate  Plate  Plate 

King Arthur’s Enchantresses Guinevere with the cleft shield. (London, British Library, Additional , fol. v. By permission of the British Library.) Arthur and Morgause in bed. (London, British Library, Additional , fol. . By permission of the British Library.) Arthur sets the newborns adrift. (London, British Library, Additional , fol. v. By permission of the British Library.) Frederick Sandys, ‘Vivien’, . (Manchester City Art Gallery. Reproduced with permission.) Edward Burne-Jones, ‘The Beguiling of Merlin’, . (Lady Lever Gallery, Port Sunlight. © National Museums Liverpool.) John Moyr Smith, ‘Vivien’ tile (c. ). ‘Mrs le Fay’: illustration by Daniel Beard for A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, . Morgan le Fay from Camelot  # (©  D.C. Comics. All rights reserved. Used with permission.) Merlin (Nicol Williamson) and Morgana (Helen Mirren) in John Boorman’s Excalibur (). (Reproduced with sole purpose of enhancing the discussion of film.) The Nine Morgens from the  Glastonbury Goddess Festival. (Photograph: Ann Scott. © Ann Scott. Reproduced with permission.) Saraïde leaves for Gaunes with two greyhounds, c. . (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale MS français , fol. v. Reproduced by permission.) Arthur, Uriens and Accolon hunting the hart. (London, British Library, Additional , fol. . By permission of the British Library.) A dwarf brings Accolon Excalibur. (London, British Library, Additional , fol. v. By permission of the British Library.) Initial M: left, Arthur agrees to fight; right, Morgan addresses the younger brother. (London, British Library, Additional. , fol. . By permission of the British Library.) Yvain prevents Morgan from killing Uriens. (London, British Library, Additional , fol. : By permission of the British Library.) Morgan’s damsel brings Arthur the enchanted cloak. (London, British Library, Additional . fol. . By permission of the British Library.) Morgan surprises her lover with another woman. (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale MS français , fol. . Reproduced by permission.) Gawain rescues his mother. (London, British Library, Additional , fol. . By permission of the British Library.) The death of the Queen of Orkney. (Österreichische Nationalbibliotek, Vienna, , fol. . By permission of the Österreichische Nationalbibliotek.) Edward Burne-Jones, ‘Merlin and Nimuë’. (Oxford Union Murals, .) Val Prinsep, ‘Nimuë bringing Sir Pelleas to Ettarde after their quarrel’. (Oxford Union Murals, .) John Hungerford Pollen, ‘King Arthur receiving Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake’. (Oxford Union Murals, .) Frederick Sandys, ‘Morgan le Fay’, –. (Birmingham City Art Gallery. Reproduced with permission.)

Index

Abélard, Peter,  Accolon, , –, , , , , , , , ; in The Mists of Avalon – Acrasia, – Acton, Sir William,  adultery, , , , , , , , –, , ,  Aeneas, –; Roman de Aeneas,  Aeneid, The,  Agravain, , , , , , , ; Agravaine, ,  Albéniz, Isaac, ,  n Alcina, –,  n, n Alexander, the Great, ,  Alexander, the Orphan, , , , –,  n, n Allen, Joan,  Amavia,  Amorotto (Lamerok),  Anna, Arthur’s sister, , –,  n, n,  n Antoine, Master,  Apples, Isle of,  , ,  Arcade,  Archibald, Elizabeth, , , ,  n Argante, ,  Ariosto, Ludovico, – Aristotle, , , , ,  n Armstrong, Dorsey, , , , ,  Arnold, Matthew, – Art Journal, The, 

Arthour and Merlin, Of,  Arthur, King, –; and Accolon, –; and Mordred, –; and Morgan, –; and Queen of Orkney, –, ; death of, –, –; in Avalon, –, , –; in Monty Python, –; Morgan’s hostility to, –, –; sisters of, –, – ‘Arthur in Avalon’ (Burne-Jones),  Arthur the Less,  Ash, Randolph, ,  n Asher, Martha,  Astolfo, – astrology, –, , ,  Atlantis, , , ,  n Augustine, ,  Aunowre, , ,  n Avalon, , , , , , , , , , –, , , , , , , , , , , , , , –, , – Avalon, Dame d’, see Dame d’Avalon Aylies la Belle Pelerine,  Bachofen, Johannes, ,  Bademagu, King, , , –, ,  n Balin, , , , , ,  n, n,  n; ‘Balin and Balan’ – Bank, Stephen,  baptism, , , , , , , , , , 



King Arthur’s Enchantresses

Barinthus,  Barr, Mike, and Brian Bolland, ,  Barron, Steve,  Bataille Loquifer, La, –, – Bâtard de Bouillon, Le, – Batt, Catherine, ,  n,  n Bauduins, King, – Baum, Paull,  Baumgartner, Emmanuelle, ,  Bedivere,  Beerbohm Tree, Henry,  Beeton, Samuel Orchart,  Beheading Game, the, –, , ,  n Benoît de Ste. Maure,  Berthelot, Anne, , ,  n,  n Bertilak, – Bielengier, , ,  Birtwistle, Harrison,  n; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (opera),  n Blaess, Madeleine, ,  n, n Blancheflor,  Blaise, Master, , , ,  Blasine, , , ,  n Bloch, R. Howard,  Bogdanow, Fanni, , , , ,  n Boiardo, Matteo, – Bonham Carter, Helena,  Boorman, John, , –, ,  n Bors, –, , , , –, , , ,  Bors, King,  Boughton, Rutland, ,  n,  n Bowman, Marion,  Bradley, Marion Zimmer, , – Branca, Daniela,  Brandus,  Brehus sans pité, , , , –,  n; see also Fe sens Pietat Breton lai, , ,  n Bretons, , , , , , , ,  n,  n,  n Brewer, Elisabeth, , ,  Briffault, Robert,  Brimesent, ,  n Britain, Great, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  Britons, , ; ‘hope of the’, ,  n Brittany, , , , ,  n,  n Brocéliande, Forest of, , , , ,  n

Bromwich, Rachel,  Bruckheimer, Jerry, ; King Arthur  Brunissen,  Brut, of Layamon,  Brut, of Wace,  Buchanan, R.D., , ; ‘The Fleshly School of Poetry’, ,  Buchanan, R. Williams, ,  Buckley, Jerome,  Buckley, Reginald, ,  n Buckton, Alice,  Budapest, Zsuzsanna,  Building News, The,  Bulwer-Lytton, Sir Edward, –, ; King Arthur, –,  Burden, Janey,  Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, , –, –, , ,  Burne-Jones, Lady Georgiana, ,  Burne-Jones, Margaret,  Burns, E. Jane,  Butler, David,  Byatt, A.S., ; Possession  Bynum, Caroline Walker,  Cador,  Calogrenant,  Camelot, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  Camelot  , – Cameron, Julia Margaret, – Candle in the Wind, The (White),  Canile (Gamille),  Capalu, see Chapalu Caradoc,  n Caradoc of Llancarfan,  n Carados, ,  Carolsfeld, Julius Schnorr von,  Carr, James Comyns,  Caxton, William, ,  n,  n Celtic myth, , , , ,  n Celtic supernatural figures, ,  n chansons de geste, , , –, , –, ,  n,  n Chapalu, ; Capalu,  Chapman, Graham,  Charlemagne, , –,  chastity tests, , , ,  n,  n Chaucer, Geoffrey, , ; Franklin’s Tale 

Index Chevalier du papegau, Le,  Chiron (planet), – Chrétien de Troyes, , , , , , –, , , , , , ,  Christian, John, , ,  n Circe, –, , ,  Clarence, Duke of, , ; see also Galescalain Claudas, King, –, , , , , , ,  clerics, as authors, , , , , , , , , , , ,  Cleopatra,  cloak, poisoned, , , , ,  Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, A (Twain), –, – Constantinople, Emperor of,  Chevalier de la Charrete, Le, , , ,  Coming K—, The, ,  n Cooper, Helen, , ,  Corbenic,  Corbon,  Cornwall, , , , , ; Duke of, , , ,  n; King of, see Mark courtesy, , –, –, , , –, , , , , ,  n Coutts, Francis Money, – Crystal Cave, The, (Stewart),  Daedalus,  Dama del Isola di Vallone (cf. Dame d’Avalon),  n Dama del Lago (Lady of the Lake),  Damas,  Dame d’Avalon, –, –, –, –, ,  Damoiselle cacheresse, la, , , , , –, , –, , –, ,  n,  n Davies, Marion Wynne, ,  n,  n De Ortu Waluuanii, –,  n,  n demons, demonic magic, –, –, , , , , , , , ,  n Dennis, a peasant, ,  n Diana, , –, , , ,  n, n Dido, , ,  Didot Perceval,  Dinadan, ,  divination, , , , , , ,  n Dolorous Tower, , , , , , , 



don contraignant,  Don Quixote,  Doré, Gustave, , , ,  n Dorigen,  Draco Normannicus, ,  n dragons, , , , –, , , , ,  Drian,  Dryden, John,  Du Maurier, Gerald,  Dürer, Albrecht,  dwarfs, , ,  n Dwarf Knight (Evadeam),  Dyonas,  Earthly Paradise, , , ,  Earthly Paradise, The (Morris),  Eaton, Mrs Fanny,  Ector de Maris, , ,  Edel, Uli,  Edward VII, King,  Eglantine, ,  Elaine, maid of Ascolat, , ; ‘Elaine’ (Tennyson),  Elaine, mother of Galahad,  enclosure, , –, –, , , , –, –, , , , , , , , n, n Enfances Gauvain, Les, – ‘Enid’ (Tennyson),  Enide, , , –, ,  Erec, , , , – Erec (Hartmann von Aue), , , ,  Erec et Enide (Chrétien de Troyes), , , , , , , , –, ,  Erichtho, ,  Escalot, Maid of,  Esclarmonde, ; Esclarmonde  esplumeor, ; esplumoir, ,  n Estlond, Queen of,  Estoire de Saint Graal, L’, ,  Estoire de Merlin, L’, , –, , , , –, , , , –, , –, , , , ;  edition,  Étienne de Rouen,  Ettard, , , , ; Ettarde,  Eucharist, ,  Evadeam,  Evaine,  Excalibur (sword), , , –, , , , , , , , , , , ,



King Arthur’s Enchantresses

 n,  n,  n,  n Excalibur (Boorman), , –,  n,  n exchange of winnings, –,  exchange of women, ,  Faerie Queene, The (Spenser), , – fairies, , , , , –, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  n,  n,  n, n,  n, n,  n,  n,  n,  n, n,  n,  n fairies, water, , , –, ,  fairy-godmother, , –,  fairy mistress, , –, ,  fairy tales,  Fata Morgana, , ,  Faucon, J.-C., ,  Faula, La, – Faunus, – Fe sens Pietat (Brehus sans pité),  Feimurgân, – Felix,  Field, Peter,  Fier baiser, ,  n films, , –, , – fin’amors, , , , , , , , , , , , ,  First Knight (Zucker),  Fisher, Sheila, ,  n Fitzgerald, Penelope,  Florete,  Floriant,  Floriant et Florete,  Flour de Lis, – Folie de Lancelot, La, , , , ,  Fortunate Isle(s), the, , , ,  Foulon, Charles,  Frazer, Sir James, ,  frescoes, , ,  Freud, Sigmund, , , , –, , , , , , ; Oedipal triangle, , , ,  Friedman, Albert,  Friedrich Barbarossa,  Fries, Maureen, ,  n,  n Frik,  Fullarton, Ralph McLeod,  Gaheris, , , , , –, –,  Galahad, , , , , ,  n Galehaut, , 

Galescalain, , –, , , , , ,  n Galvano, Calvano (Gawain) ,  n Gardner, Edmund, ,  Gardner, Gerald, , – Gareth, , –, –, ,  n,  n; ‘Tale of Sir Gareth’, , ; ‘Gareth and Lynette’,  Gaskell, Helen, , ,  n Gawain, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ; and his mother, –; and Ponzela Gaia –; and Tristan, , ; in painted chamber, ; in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, –, , , , , ; transformed into dwarf,  gaze, –, –, ,  n Geoffrey of Monmouth, , –, –, , , , , , , ,  Gerald of Wales, , ,  Gervase of Tilbury, , , , ,  n Gimbutas, Marija,  Girflet,  Glastonbury, , , , , , –,  n,  n,  n; Abbey, , ; Chalice Well, ; Tor, ,  Gliten,  Gliton,  Glitonea,  Gloriana,  Glover, Blanche (Possession), ,  n God, , , , , , , , ,  goddess, Morgan as, , –,  Goddess, the, , – gods, ,  Golden Bough, The (Frazer), ,  Goodman, Jennifer,  Gordon, E.V.,  ‘Gothic revival’, ,  Grail, Holy, , , , , , , , , , , , ,  Grail Quest, , , , , ,  Graves, Robert, –; The White Goddess, – Gray, J.M.,  Green Knight, the, , –, , – Greenblatt, Stephen,  Gregory, Pope, , ,  n Griffin, Miranda,  griffins, ,  n Grimm, the Brothers,  Grummore, 

Index Guelpho,  Guenevere, , , , , , , , ; and Arthur, , , ; and Guiomar, , , , , ; and Lady of Lake, , , –, ; and Lancelot, ,  , , , –; and Morgan, , , –, , , –, –, –; in hell, ; in modern era, , –, ; in Victorian era, –; ‘Guenevere’ (Tennyson), ; see also Gwenhwyfar Guerin, Victoria,  Guerrhet,  Guinebal, ,  Guiomar, , –, , , , , ,  n Guiot manuscript, ,  Guyon, – Gwenhwyfar, – Hallewes, , , ,  n,  n ‘Hansel and Gretel’,  Harf-Lancner, Laurence, , , , , , , , , ,  n,  n, , n, n,  n, n,  n, , n Hart, Lorenz,  Hartmann von Aue, , –,  harts, ,  Hautdesert,  Helaine, Lancelot’s mother,  hell, , –, , , ,  Héloïse,  Hemyson, ; see also Huneson, Onesun Heng, Geraldine, , ,  herbs, , , , , ,  , , ,  Herlin,  Hermesan,  Heroides, The (Ovid),  hieros gamos,  Historia Regum Britanniae, , , –, , , ,  Hoel, King of Brittany,  Holbrook, Sue Ellen, ,  n Hollow Hills, The (Stewart), ,  Holman Hunt, William, , ,  homoeroticism, homosexuality, –, , ,  n homosociality,  horn, magic, , , , , , , , ,  n Hugues Dodekin, –



Huneson, –; see also Hemyson, Onesun Huon of Bordeaux, ; Huon of Bordeaux,  Huston, Anjelica,  Hyginus, ,  Ibsen, Henrik,  Idle, Eric,  Idylls of the King, The, –, – Ill-made Knight, The (White),  incest, , , , , –, , , , , –,  n,  n,  n India, , ,  Ireland, , , , , , ,  n Irving, Henry, –, ; King Arthur, – Iseult, of Brittany, – Iseult, of Ireland , , , , ; Isolde, ; Isode, ; see also Yseult Isidore of Seville, , , ,  n, n Iweret,  Jason,  Jaufré, ; Jaufré, , ,  Jauss, Hans, ,  Jean d’Outremeuse, ,  n ‘Jenny’ (Rossetti),  Jesus Christ, , , , , ,  Jocasta,  Joie de la Cort, La, , –, ,  n,  n Jones, Kathy,  Jones, Terry,  Joseph of Arimathea,  Joy of the Court, see Joie de la Cort, La Judas,  Juliana, saint,  Julius Caesar, ,  Kahn, Michael,  Kay, Arthur’s foster-brother, , , ,  Kay of Estral, ,  n Keats, John,  Kehedin the Fair,  Kempe Owyne,  Kennedy, Elspeth, , ,  Keomi, –,  n Kevin, Merlin of Britain,  Kieckhefer, Richard, ,  Kisacky, Julia,  Knight of the Cart, The, see Conte de la Charrete, La



King Arthur’s Enchantresses

Koble, Nathalie, ,  n Krueger, Roberta,  Lady of the Lake, , , , , , ; and Arthur, , ; and Guenevere, –, , –; and Lancelot, –, , –, ; and Lancelot’s cousins, –; and magic –, ; and Merlin, –; as Morgan’s sister, , –, ; influence on Morgan’s characterization, –; in modern period, –, –, –; in Victorian era, , , ; in opposition to Morgan, , , , – Lady, the (Bertilak’s wife), – Lailoken,  Lamerok, , , , , , , , , –, ,  n; Lamorak (in The Wicked Day), – Lamotte, Christabel, ,  n Lancelet, see Lancelot Lancelot, –; and his cousins, ; and Guenevere, , ; and Lady of Lake, –; and Morgan, , –, –; and paintings, –; in Val sans Retour, –; Lancelet (The Mists of Avalon) –; Lancelot, , –, –, , –, , , , , –, , , , , –, , , , , –, –, –, –,  Lanval, , ,  Lanzelet, , ; Lanzelet (Ulrich von Zatzikhoven), , , , ,  Last Enchantment, The (Stewart),  Layamon, , ,  Leavy, Barbara Fass,  Lionel, –, , , , ,  literacy, , ,  Little John,  Livre d’Artus, , –, , , , , –,  Logres, , , , , , ,  Loquifer, La Bataille de, –, – Lord of the Rings, The (Tolkien),  Lot, King of Orkney, , , –, , , , ,  Louandre, Charles, ,  love-sickness,  Loy, Myrna, ,  n Lucan, ; Pharsalia,  Lucifer,  Lukitsh, Joanne, 

Lumière, Louis,  Lundt, Bea, , , , , , n Lunete, – Lynette, ; ‘Gareth and Lynette’,  Lyonesse, , – Mab, Queen,  Maboagrain, –, ,  n Mabuz,  magic dance, –, ,  magic rings, , , , –, , –, , , ,  Malagrin, – Malmesbury, William of,  Malory, Sir Thomas, , , , , , , , , , –, , –, , –, , , –, –, , –, –, –, –, –, , , , , ,  Mancoff, Debra, ,  n Margulies, Julianne,  Marian, Maid, ,  Marie de France, ,  n Mark, King of Cornwall, , , , , , , , ,  Markale, Jean,  marvellous, the, –, , , , , , , –, , , ,  n matricide, – Matthews, Caitlín, ,  n May Day babies, massacre of, –, ,  Mazoe,  Medea, –,  ‘Medea’ (Sandys), – medievalism, ,  Meideland, Queen of,  Méla, Charles, ,  Meleagant,  Meleager,  Méliadus (Lady of Lake’s lover), , , , , , ,  n,  n,  n Melissa,  Melusine,  Melyodas (Tristan’s father), ; Meliadus  n Merlin, , , –, , , , , , ; and Morgan, , , , –, ; as god, –; as lover, –, , , –; as prophet, –, , –, , –; as teacher of magic, –, ,

Index , ; birth of, ; in Burne-Jones, –, –; in Camelot  , –; in Excalibur, –; in Mark Twain, –; in Mary Stewart, –; in Matthew Arnold, –; in Mists of Avalon, –; in modern period, –; in opera, –, ; in Tennyson, –; in T.H. White, –, ; in Victorian art, –; in Victorian period, –; Merlin (Robert de Boron), , ; Merlin: A Dramatic Poem (MacLeod Fullarton), –; Merlin (Isaac Albéniz), –; Merlin ( miniseries), – ‘Merlin and Vivien’ (Tennyson),  Merlin’s mother, , –,  ‘Merlin’s Tomb’,  Metamorphoses (Ovid),  Meurvin,  Michael, Saint,  Milton, John, ,  Mim, Madame, –, ,  n Mirren, Helen, ,  misogyny, , , , , , , , , ,  n,  n Mists of Avalon, The (Bradley), , , – Mont Gibel, ; Montgibel, ,  n Monty Python and the Holy Grail, , –,  n, n, n Moore, Dennis, ,  Morcades, Queen of Orkney,  Mordred, , , –, , –, , , , , –, , –, , , –,  n,  n, n, n,  n; Modred (Tennyson), – Morgan, –, ; and Accolon, –, –; and Alexander the Orphan, –; and Arthur, –; and demonic powers, –, –; and Guenevere, –, –; and Lady of Lake, , –; and Lancelot, –, –, –; and paintings, –; and politics, –; and Ponzela Gaia, –; and Val sans Retour, , –; and Victorians, –, –; and Yvain, –, ; as goddess, –, –; as healer, –, , –; as hostile to Arthur, , –, –; as Mordred’s mother, –, –; as psychopomp, –; in Avalon, –, –; in Camelot  , –; in chanson de geste, –, –; in Excalibur, see Morgana; in film, –; in



Malory, –; in Mark Twain, –; in Mary Stewart, ; in Mists of Avalon, see Morgaine; in Prophesies de Merlin, –; in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, –; in Tavola Ritonda, –; in T.H. White, ; in Tristan en Prose, –; learning of, , –, – ‘Morgan le Fay’ (Sandys), – Morgan, Hank (the ‘Yankee’), – Morgaine (Mists of Avalon), , –,  n Morgana (Excalibur), , –, ; Morgana (Orlando Innamorato and Furioso),  n, n Morgana, la Fata, , , ,  n Morgause, , , , , , ; (in Malory) , , –, –; (in T.H. White) –; (in Mary Stewart) –; (in The Mists of Avalon) –; see also Orkney, Queen of Morgen (Vita Merlini), –, ,  Morgens, the Nine,  Morholt, ,  n Moronoe,  Morrígan, the, ,  n, n Morris, Rosemary, , , ,  Morris, William, , , , , , ; The Earthly Paradise, ; ‘The Defence of Guenevere’,  Mort Artu, La, , , , , , , , , , , ,  Mort Artu, La, Post-Vulgate, , , ,  Mortdant,  Morte Darthur (Malory), , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  ‘Morte d’Arthur’ (Tennyson),  Moyr Smith, John,  Murray, Margaret,  Muses, the, , ,  n Myrddin, ; see also Merlin Myreur des histors, Ly,  Nabur,  Nazarenes, the,  necromancy, , , , , , ,  n necrophilia, , ,  Neill, Sam,  Nenyve (in Malory), , , –, , ,  n, , n neopaganism, , –; see also New Age religion Neutres, King, , , , 



King Arthur’s Enchantresses

Oberon,  Odyssey, The (Homer),  Ogier the Dane, –, , , ,  n; Ogier le Danois, , ,  n Oisín,  Oklahoma!,  Olstead, Myra, ,  Once and Future King, The (White), –,  Onesun, –, , ; see also Hemyson, Huneson Orgueilleuse Pucele, the, ,  Orians, King,  Orkney, Queen of, , , , , , , –, , ,  n, ; see also Morcades, Morgause Orlando Furioso,  Orlando Innamorato,  Other World, the, , , –, , , , –, , , ,  n,  n,  n Oughtlake,  Ovid, ,  Oxford Union, the, , –, , , , 

Paradise, , ; see also Earthly Paradise Paradise Lost,  Paris, Gaston,  Paris, Judgement of, ,  Patmore, Coventry, ,  Paton, Lucy Allen,  Pedivere,  Pelleas, , , , , ,  n Pelles, king, , ,  Pellias (in Post-Vulgate Suite de Merlin),  Pellinor, King, , –, –, ,  n,  n Perceval, ,  Percy, bishop, ; Reliques of Ancient English Poetry,  Perilous Forest, the, ,  Perlesvaus, , , – Pharian,  Phyllis, ,  Pickford, Cedric,  Plantagenets,  Poisoned Apple, Episode of the, ,  Pollen, John Hungerford, – Ponzela Gaia, la, , , , –,  n,  n,  n, n; La Ponzela Gaia, , ,  n Pope, the, ,  Possession (Byatt),  Post-Vulgate Cycle, the, , , , , , –,  Potts, L.J. ,  Poulson, Christine,  Powys, John Cowper,  pregnancy, , , , , ,  Prinsep, Val, , – Prophesies de Merlin, Les, , , , , , , , , , , , , –, , , , , –, , , , , ;  edition, , ,  Prose Merlin, The, ,  prostitution, –, , ,  Purcell, Henry, ; King Arthur: Or the British Worthy,  Putter, Ad, ,  n,  n

paintings, in Morgan’s castle, –, –, –, , ; in Perlesvaus, ; in Camelot, , ; in Oxford Union, –; Victorian, –, ,  Palin, Michael,  Palmer, the,  Palomides, , , 

Quarterly Review, The,  Queen of Air and Darkness, The (White), – Queste del Saint Graal, La, Post-Vulgate, , , , , , ,  Queste del Saint Graal, La, Vulgate,  Questing Beast, the, , , ,  n

New Age religion, ,  Nibelungenlied, Das,  Nimuë, , , , , , , , , , , –; in Burne-Jones, –, –; in Idylls of the King, ; in Mary Stewart, –; in Merlin miniseries,  Niniane (in Livre D’Artus), –; (in Mists of Avalon) ,  Ninianne (in Lancelot), , , , ,  Niniene (in Non-Cyclical Lancelot),  Nivian (in Albéniz’s Merlin), – Niviene (in Post-Vulgate Suite de Merlin), , , , , , , –, , ,  Non-Cyclical Lancelot, The, , ,  North Wales, King of,  North Wales, Queen of, , , , , , , ,  Nymenche (Prose Lancelot), –

Index Rabanus Maurus,  Rainouart, , ; Rainouart, ,  Ramirez, Sara, ,  n rash promise, –, , , ,  redemption, of Merlin, , , ,  Revue de Paris, La, ,  Richardson, Miranda,  Rigby, Marjory, ,  n Rions, King, , ,  n Robert de Boron, , , , , ,  Robin Hood, , ,  n Rodgers, Richard,  Roland,  Roman de la Rose, Le,  Roman de Troie, Le,  Rome, , , ,  Rosenberg, James,  Rossellini, Isabella,  Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, , –, , –; ‘Jenny’,  Round Table, , , , , , , , , , ,  , , , , , , , , , , , ,  Royal Academy, the, ,  Ruggiero, –,  n, n Rupert (talking horse),  Ruskin, John, ,  Sagremor, ,  Sandys, Frederick, , , , –,  Saracens, , , ,  Saraïde, –, ,  Saturday Review, The, ,  Saxon Rock, Castle of the, ,  Saxons, , –, , , , ,  n scabbard, magic, , , –, , –,  n Schoenherr, Douglas, ,  n Scotland, Queen of,  Scott, Clement,  Scott, Gavin,  Scott, Sir Walter, ,  Sebile, , –, –, , , –, , ; Sedile, ,  Segal, Vivienne,  Segurant,  Seneca,  Shalott, Lady of,  shape-changing, –, , , –, , , ,  Shaw, George Bernard, 



Shelob,  Shelton, Thomas,  shield, split, , , ,  n shield, ‘strange’, – Short, Martin,  siblings, –, , , , , , , , ,  Sibyl, the,  Sichelm, King of Norway,  Sidhe,  Silver, Carole,  Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, , , , , , –, , ,  sister’s son relationship, –, – Solomon, King, –,  n, n soporite, ,  n Sorestan, Queen of, , , – Southey, Robert, –, , , ,  n Spamalot, , ,  n, n Spedding, James,  Spenser, Sir Edmund, , – Stanhope, Roddam Spencer,  Stansby, edition of Malory,  Stanzaic Morte Arthur, ,  Starhawk, , –; Spiral Dance, The,  Sterling, John,  Stewart, Mary, , –, ,  Stillman, William,  stones, magic, , , ,  ,  Suite de Merlin, Post-Vulgate, , , , , , , , , –, , , , , , , ,  Sullivan, Sir Arthur,  Svengali,  Swinburne, Algernon, , ,  Sword in the Stone, The (novel), –,  Sword in the Stone, The (film),  Taliesin, , ,  Tavola Ritonda, La, , , –, ,  Taylor, Beverly, , , ,  Telegraph, The Daily,  television miniseries, , ,  Telgesinus, see Taliesin Temptation Game, the, –, ,  Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, , –, , –, , ; The Princess, ; see also Idylls of the King Terry, Dame Ellen, – Tertullian,  Thaurus, King of the Saxons, –, 



King Arthur’s Enchantresses

Thiten,  Tigris, river,  Times, The, ,  Tintagel, , ,  n Tir n’an Og,  Tirant, ; Tirant lo Blanc,  Tolkien, J.R.R., ,  Torres, Jacinto,  Torroella, Guillem de, – Tournaments, of Harde Roche, ; of Ice, ; of Lonezep, ; of Rocca Dura, ; of Roche Dure, , , ; of Surluce,  Trilby (du Maurier),  Tristan, , , –, ; see also Tristram Tristan en Prose, , , , , , , –, –, , –, ,  ‘Tristram and Iseult’ (Arnold), – Tristram, –, , , ; ‘Tale of Tristram’, , ,  Troiano,  Troy, –,  n Tuck, Friar,  Twain, Mark, –, ; see also A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court Tyronoe,  Umland, Rebecca, ,  Urbgen, King,  Uriens, King, , , –, , , –, – Urré,  Uther, King, , –, –, , , , , –,  n vagina dentata,  Val sans Retour, , , –, –, –, , , , , ,  n,  n; Val des Faux Amants,  Valiente, Doreen,  Verdant, – Vilien,  Villemarqué, Theodore de la, , ,  n Vinaver, Eugene, vii, ,  n,  n Virgil, , , , ,  n Virgin Mary, , , , , ,  virginity, , , , , , , , –, , , , , ,  n Vita Merlini, , , , , , , , ,  Vivian (in Matthew Arnold), –

Viviane (in Estoire de Merlin), , , , , , –, , , , , , , , –; (in Mists of Avalon) , – Vivien (in Victorian era), , , , –, , , , , ,  ‘Vivien’ (Tennyson), , , ; (Sandys), –; (John Moyr Smith),  Vulgate Cycle, the, , , , , ,  Wace, , ,  Wagner, Richard, , ; The Ring Cycle, ,  n, n wall-paintings, see paintings Wars of the Roses,  Wart, the (T.H. White), , – Wathelet-Willem, Jeanne,  Watts, G.F., ,  Weever, Jacqueline de, ,  Whitaker, Muriel, , , ,  n White, T.H., –, –, ,  Wicca, , – Wicked Day, The (Stewart), , – Williamson, Nicol, ,  Wills, W.G.,  Wilson-Johnson, David,  Wilson-Okamura, David Scott,  witchcraft, ,  witches, , , , , , –,  Witch in the Wood, The (White), – ‘Witch’s Tree’, the,  Wood, Charles,  Wood, Esther,  Woodward, Benjamin,  Wordsworth, William,  Wotan,  Yblis,  Ygraine, , , , ; as a Lady of Lake, ; Ygerne  n Yseult, –; Ysolt  n; see also Iseult Yvain, , , , –, , , , , , ,  n,  n,  n; Uwayne – Yvain (Chrétien de Troyes), , , , , ,  Zambaco, Mary, – Zeikowitz, Richard, ,  n Zucker, Jerry,  Zumthor, Paul, , 