Morgan Le Fay and Other Women
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
THE UNIVERSITY OF HULL Morgan le Fay and Other Women: A Study of the Female Phantasm in Medieval Literature being a Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of a PhD in English in the University of Hull by Amy Annie Ophelia Lambert, BA November 2015 1 Thesis Abstract ‘Morgan le Fay and Other Women’ is an interdisciplinary study that seeks to rationalise the various manifestations of a universal Other in medieval culture. Using Theresa Bane’s statement that ‘Morgan le F[a]y is a complicated figure in history and mythology; she has had many names and fulfilled many roles in religion and folklore’ as a focal argument, I present a methodology that identifies these ‘many names’ from what might be described as a primarily medieval perspective. Exploring the medieval notion of ‘character type’, this establishes a series of defining attributes that the culture of the period likely regarded as a ‘standard list’ for Morgan’s underlying identity: the Other Woman. Asserting that Morgan’s role in the medieval tradition is largely an attempt on to manifest this age-old concept in a variety of forms appropriate for different authors’ milieus and genres, this thesis suggests that medieval writers project onto the character a series of attributes recognised as Other from their own contexts. By applying this method, which has a basis in medieval semiotics and philosophy, to a range of characters, I propose that derivatives of the ‘Morganic’ persona might be found in a range of genres including medieval romance, drama, folklore, and, in my final chapter, the tradition of male outlaws. 2 Contents Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 4 Chapter One: Literary Phantasms ............................................................................................... 28 Chapter Two: Making Manifest - The Morgan Phantasm .......................................................... 60 Chapter Three: Cues and Triggers ............................................................................................. 105 Chapter Four: ‘Re-Named Morgans’ ......................................................................................... 156 Chapter Five: ‘Unnamed Morgans’ ........................................................................................... 191 Chapter Six: Outlaws and Other Outcasts - the Male Face of Morgan le Fay .......................... 218 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 239 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 249 3 Introduction [Morgan’s] myriad forms provide an opportunity to comment on contemporary social expectations for women and men alike, and a means by which we can imagine how those expectations might be expanded, rebelled against, even overturned.1 Jill Marie Hebert Since the publication of Lucy Paton’s 1903 Studies in the Fairy Mythology of Arthurian Romance – a study undertaken ‘in the hope of obtaining light upon the wider subject of fairy mythology [and Morgan le Fay that] no-one has hitherto attempted’2 – attempts to rationalise Morgan le Fay’s equivocal characterisation have dominated studies of Arthurian women. While this is in part a natural response to Morgan’s function as a literary ‘Other’, a character type whose mysterious alterity has prompted what Richard Kearney terms ‘a vertiginous blend of fear and fascination’3 for generations of readers, Morgan’s popularity as a subject of scholarly discussion is largely the result of her compound identity. Hailed as a healer by Geoffrey of Monmouth, denounced as the devil’s accomplice by Hartmann von Aue, and erratically recast as everything in between over a near millennial period, Morgan le Fay, at once goddess, witch and fairy, presents a diverse array of faces to her multi-generational audience. Although Jill Marie Hebert is right to note that Morgan’s flexibility has provided authors with an opportunity to comment on ‘social expectations for women and men alike’, 4 these myriad guises have also generated a greater disparity of scholarly opinion than that surrounding any other figure from the Arthurian dramatis personae. Whilst Ivo Kamps defends Morgan’s role throughout the chivalric saga in unequivocal terms, claiming that it is only because of her habitually ‘scapegoat’ function that Round Table society is able to maintain its order and integrity,5 Robin Fox believes she represents all that is negative about women in Arthurian stories; a disabling, solitary figure whose attempts to advance her own interests are particularly malign when considered 1 Hebert, Jill Marie (2013) Morgan le Fay, Shapeshifter. Palgrave Macmillan: New York. P.248. 2 Paton, Lucy Allen (1960, 1903) Studies in the Fairy Mythology of Arthurian Romance. Ayer Publishing: London. P.41. 3 Kearney, Richard (2003) Strangers, Gods and Monsters: Interpreting Otherness. Routledge: London and New York. P.35. 4 Hebert, P.248. 5 Kamps, Ivo (1989) ‘Magic, Women, and Incest: The Real Challenges of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’. Exemplaria, 1: Pp. 313-336 (314). 4 alongside the homosocial world of male camaraderie. 6 Where Corinne Saunders believes that Morgan’s inclusion in Chre tien’s Yvain intimates the grand interventions of fate that often befall the great heroes of romance (‘destiny provides him, as it did Erec, with the magical healing ointment of Morgan le Fay’ 7 , Evans Smith claims that Chre tien’s Morgan remains a ‘mysterious goddess of whom [the three ladies who come across the ailing Yvain] represent the courtly incarnation.’8 And in Le Morte Darthur Margery Hourihan reads Malory’s Morgan as the darker of ‘the two opposite aspects of the great goddess’9 – the ‘light’ being, she argues, the beautiful lady of the lake – a point sharply countered by Saunders’ argument that Malory intended his Morgan to be perceived in mortal fashion by emphasising her blood relationship to Arthur: ‘Malory does not probe Morgan’s identity as ‘le Fay’, but rather notes that she was “put to scole in a nunnery, and ther she lerned so moche that she was a greate clerke of nygromancye” (I.2, 10 ’.10 While scholarly discord is far from uncommon in Arthurian studies, the lack of general consensus surrounding Morgan le Fay goes far beyond that typically experienced in relation to a singular character. In her Morgan le Fay, Shapeshifter, Herbert ascribes this conflict to the character’s lack of adherence with the conventional models of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ femininity typically found in medieval romance, emphasising that it is primarily Morgan’s metamorphic function that causes her to appear under such an extensive range of identities. This is a fairly common argument. In her The Myth of Morgan la Fey, Kristina Pe rez asserts that scholars have yet to arrive at a conclusion regarding the fay’s true identity because ‘Morgan rejects the label of either Madonna or Whore’ typically experienced in relation to medieval females,11 an assertion that begins to address the issue of character type that is fundamental to this study. And Jeana Jorgensen claims that Morgan’s aversion of the typical roles imposed upon medieval women has thwarted our ‘attempts to contain her’12 within any given classification, a valid argument given that 6 Fox, Robin (2005) ‘Male Bonding in the Epics and Romances’ in Jonathan Gottschall and David Sloan Wilson (eds) The Literary Animal: Evolution and the Nature of Narrative. Northwestern University Press: Evanston. Pp.126-144 (143). 7 Saunders, Corinne J. (1993) The Forest of Medieval Romance: Avernus, Broceliande, Arden. D.S Brewer: Cambridge. P.71. 8 Smith, Evans Lansing (1997) The Hero Journey in Literature: Parables of Poesis. University Press of America: Lanham and London. 117. 9 Hourihan, Margery (1997) Deconstructing the hero: literary theory and children's literature. Routledge: London. P.179. 10 Saunders, Corrine (2011) ‘Magic, Enchantment and Female Power’ in Sue Niebrzydowski (ed) Middle- aged Women in the Middle Ages. D.S. Brewer: Cambridge. Pp.37-52 (50). 11 Pérez, Kristina (2014) The Myth of Morgan la Fey. Palgrave Macmillan: New York. P.8. 12 Jorgensen, Jeana (2014) ‘Strategic Silences: Voiceless Heroes in Fairy Tales’ in Lori M. Campbell (ed) A Quest of Her Own: Essays on the Female Hero in Modern Fantasy. McFarland: Jefferson. Pp.15-95 (36). 5 these groupings do not originate from Morgan’s own literary environment. However, where these analyses simply accept that Morgan does not comply with twentieth- and twenty-first-century classifications of medieval woman, Eugѐ ne Vinaver provides a more caustic argument, suggesting in his The Rise of Romance that the confusion surrounding Morgan should be attributed to her ‘most consistent and most effective [conspiracy] against our preconceived notions of literary form’. 13 This is a particularly effective rationale when noted alongside the fact that attempts to reconcile the fay with contemporary models such as the femme fatale, a term not formulated until Jules Claretie’s reference to ‘une femme qui porte malheurthe’ in 1897,14 or even feminist theory, have been generally unsuccessful. 15 Yet there is also a problem with this assessment. Given that even a nineteenth-century analysis of the character significantly postdates Morgan’s conception, it seems less likely that the character conspires against