The Arthurian Legend in British Women's Writing, 1775–1845
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Online Research @ Cardiff Avalon Recovered: The Arthurian Legend in British Women’s Writing, 1775–1845 Katie Louise Garner B.A. (Cardiff); M.A. (Cardiff) A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy School of English, Communication and Philosophy Cardiff University September 2012 Declaration This work has not been submitted in substance for any other degree or award at this or any other university or place of learning, nor is being submitted concurrently in candidature for any degree or other award. Signed ………………………………………… (candidate) Date ……………………… STATEMENT 1 This thesis is being submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD. Signed ………………………………………… (candidate) Date ……………………… STATEMENT 2 This thesis is the result of my own independent work/investigation, except where otherwise stated. Other sources are acknowledged by explicit references. The views expressed are my own. Signed ………………………………………… (candidate) Date ……………………… STATEMENT 3 I hereby give consent for my thesis, if accepted, to be available for photocopying and for inter-library loan, and for the title and summary to be made available to outside organisations. Signed ………………………………………… (candidate) Date………………………… STATEMENT 4: PREVIOUSLY APPROVED BAR ON ACCESS I hereby give consent for my thesis, if accepted, to be available for photocopying and for inter-library loans after expiry of a bar on access previously approved by the Academic Standards & Quality Committee. Signed ………………………………………… (candidate) Date………………………… Acknowledgements First thanks are due to my supervisors, Jane Moore and Becky Munford, for their unceasing assistance, intellectual generosity, and support throughout my doctoral studies. The expertise of Stephen Knight (now of the University of Melbourne, Australia) in the early stages of the project was invaluable. Carl Plasa, Katie Gramich, Anthony Mandal, Helen Phillips, Carl Phelpstead, Martin Coyle, and Heather Worthington have all offered helpful advice along the way, as have the postgraduates of 0.40. I would also like to acknowledge the help of the staff of the Arts and Social Studies Library and SCOLAR. Last and certainly not least, a very warm and heartfelt thank you is due to my family and to Vic, Simon, Vicky, and Rob for their essential encouragement and support at home. I am grateful to the AHRC and Cardiff University for financial support via the Doctoral Award Scheme (2009–11) and an ENCAP fees bursary (2008–09). The School of English, Communication, and Philosophy kindly contributed financial support towards the delivery of papers on my doctoral research at Leeds, Exeter, and Groningen, NL. Summary While the popularity of the Arthurian myth among twentieth-century and contemporary women writers is well known, earlier female engagements with the legend have remained largely unexplored. By recovering a number of unexamined texts, this thesis aims to offer a more comprehensive account of the rise of British women writers’ interest in the Arthurian story between 1775 and 1845. Locating women’s engagements with Arthur in Gothic verse, travel writing, topographical poetry, and literary annuals, it argues that differences in the kinds of Arthurian texts available to women writers in the period led to the formation of a distinct female tradition in Arthurian writing. Works by Letitia Elizabeth Landon and Felicia Hemans are discussed alongside those by lesser-known writers such as Anne Bannerman, Anna Jane Vardill, and Louisa Stuart Costello. The initial chapter examines how Arthurian material was bowdlerised and recast for presentation to the female reader in the Romantic period. This provides the context for a new interpretation of various images of anxiety in early Arthurian texts by women as a symptom of their limited, or often second-hand, access to medieval Arthurian works. The following two chapters explore the prevalence of Arthurian material in women’s Gothic verse and travel writing respectively. The fourth chapter investigates the evolution of women’s responses to contemporary Arthurian scholarship, from the popular and satirical through to romance editions of their own. The final chapter turns to Arthurian poems by women in literary annuals, culminating in a comparison of women writers’ treatments of the Maid of Astolat tale and Tennyson’s own. Annual Arthuriana informs and anticipates many of the trends that come to dominate the Arthurian revival in the second half of the nineteenth century, which I identify in conclusion as the moment when the imaginative power of female Arthuriana becomes fully realised. Table of Contents List of Illustrations……………………………………………………………………………................. Illustrations……………………………………………………………………………………................ Abbreviations…………………………………………………………………………………................. Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 1 0.1 The Arthurian Legend ................................................................................................................ 10 0.2 Arthur in the Romantic Period .................................................................................................... 13 0.3 Arthurian Writing by Women Before 1775 ................................................................................ 14 1. Arthuriana for the ‘Fair Sex’, 1775–1816........................................................................ 20 1.1 A Queen of ‘suffering virtue’: Guinevere in the Lady’s Magazine (1775) ................................ 25 1.2 A Fraught Romance: Arthurian material in Susannah Dobson’s Memoirs of Ancient Chivalry (1784) and Clara Reeve’s The Progress of Romance (1785) ..................................................... 38 1.3 Arthurian Ballads for Young Ladies: Ancient Ballads (1807) and Percy’s Reliques (1765) ..... 50 1.4 The Legacy of the Ancient Ballads : Louisa Stuart Costello’s ‘A Dream’ (1815) ...................... 64 1.5 ‘No longer secreted from the fair sex’: Gender and Early Nineteenth-Century Editions of Malory ........................................................................................................................................ 71 2. Women’s Gothic Verse and King Arthur ........................................................................ 79 2.1 The Emergence of Arthurian Female Gothic: Matilda Betham’s ‘Arthur and Albina’ (wr. 1794, pub. 1797) ................................................................................................................................... 85 2.2 ‘Great Merlin’: Elizabeth Smith’s Ossianic Reinvention of History .......................................... 90 2.3 Anne Bannerman’s ‘The Prophecy of Merlin’ (1802): An Exercise in Arthurian Female Gothic .................................................................................................................................................... 94 2.4 Mordred as Gothic Villain: Janetta Philipps, ‘Edmund and Bertha’ (1802; rev. 1811) and Charlotte Wardle, St Aelian’s; or, The Cursing Well (1814) .................................................... 112 2.5 Christabel at the Round Table: Two Arthurian Analogues to Coleridge.................................. 117 3. Exploring Ancient Britain: The Arthurian Legend in Women’s Travel Writing and Topographical Poetry ............................................................................................................. 127 3.1 Antiquarianism Disguised: The Woman Traveller and the Arthurian Legend ......................... 133 3.2 ‘An Account of Merlin’: Mary Morgan’s Tour to Milford Haven (1795) ................................ 139 3.3 ‘Fading vision’: Anne Wilson, Mary Morgan, and the Problem of the Arthurian View .......... 147 3.4 ‘Merlin concealed’: Louisa Stuart Costello’s ‘The Druid Lover’ (1844) ................................. 153 3.5 Welsh Melodies : Felicia Hemans’s Merddin Songs in Context ................................................ 161 3.6 ‘Doubtful Arthur’ in England: Hemans, Eleanor Anne Porden, Anna Sawyer, and Mary Russell Mitford ...................................................................................................................................... 168 4. Male Scholarship and the Rise of the Female Arthurianist ........................................... 176 4.1 A Lost Lady of Shalott: ‘T.B.G.’’s ‘The Maid of Ascolot’ (1821) .......................................... 183 4.2 Anna Jane Vardill’s ‘La Morte D’arthur; or the Legend of Sir Lancelot’ (1821) and the Stanzaic Morte Arthur ................................................................................................................... 192 4.3 ‘M. Denon in England’ and ‘The Last Leaf of the Parish Register’ (1821): Vardill’s Mockery of Male Arthurianists ..................................................................................................................... 200 4.4 Seeking Tristan: Louisa Stuart Costello’s Specimens of the Early Poetry of France (1835) ... 208 4.5 Lady Charlotte Guest’s Arthurian Romances in The Mabinogion (1838–49) .......................... 218 5. A Fashionable Fantasy: Arthur in the Annuals, 1829–1845 .......................................... 226 5.1 Louisa Stuart Costello’s ‘The Funeral Boat’ (1829) and the Forget Me Not ........................... 233 5.2 Letitia Elizabeth Landon’s ‘A Legend of Tintagel Castle’