Marginalia -- The Journal of the Medieval Reading Group at Cambridge


Contents

Carolyne Larrington
King Arthur’s Enchantresses: Morgan and Her Sisters in Arthurian Tradition
272 pages. I. B. Tauris, 2006. £18.99 ($35.00)
ISBN: 1845111133

 
The Lady of the Lake may be best known to modern audiences as a ‘watery tart’ from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, as Carolyne Larrington points out, but this enchantress, along with her ‘sisters’ (Morgan, Morgause and Vivien), tends to play much more substantial (and serious) roles in the Arthurian tradition. Larrington seeks to trace these roles in her fascinating new book, a study which discusses all four major enchantresses in Arthurian legend, in varying degrees of detail, from their first appearances in twelfth-century romance to their representations in modern graphic art, literature and cinema.

Larrington points out that these enchantresses are not witches, or fairies, but beautiful aristocratic women who use magic for their own ends. ‘Always alluring, intelligent and independent’, the author notes early on, ‘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’ (p. 2). Powerful, independent women and unique feminised spaces, largely in opposition to the masculine worlds of romance, are indeed the major focal points on which Larrington’s book centres. She begins with an introductory chapter on magic, in which she lays out the characteristics of her main players and discusses their sources of power – namely books – through which they acquire powerful skills in the arts of enchantment. The author then devotes the greater part of three chapters, the bulk of the study, to Morgan, through which she traces the enchantress’s varied depictions across romance texts by focusing on her interrogation of Arthur’s court and its chivalric values. The main point of discussion here is the Val sans Retour of the Lancelot-Grail Cycle, from which no knight who has ever been unfaithful to his lady can ever escape. It is Morgan’s ‘most spectacular and provocative feat of magic’ (p. 51), illustrating, as Larrington further notes, the ‘tension that men’s desire for women sets up in chivalric life’ (p. 57). The episode may be seen as a metonym of Morgan’s entire project of chivalric interrogation, and Larrington dwells on the concept of simultaneous fear and attraction – a hallmark of Arthurian enchantresses – where the Valley ‘figures the female body as both desired and dreaded’ (p. 57).

After her lengthy discussion of Morgan, Larrington then turns her attention, in a rather sweeping chapter, to the medieval Vivien, the Damoiselle Cacheresse, and the Lady of the Lake, but later in the book the Queen of Orkney (often Morgause) and the Victorian Vivien get their own chapters. This sporadic treatment perhaps points to the difficulty in discussing enchantresses throughout the whole of Arthurian tradition in a single volume. Larrington cannot be faulted for her ambition too much, though; her study neither claims nor attempts comprehensiveness, and it is perhaps the better for it. When turning to modern representations of Arthurian enchantresses, the author has to be more selective. From the immense variety of potential texts, she focuses on Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee at Arthur’s Court, T. H. White’s The Once and Future King, Mary Stewart’s The Wicked Day, The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley, Camelot 3000 (a DC Comics maxi-series from the mid-1980s) and John Boorman’s film Excalibur. In order to untangle this array of disparate treatments, Larrington employs three ‘changing or emerging disciplines’: ‘the history of religion, cinema and psychoanalysis’ (172). These analytical tools serve the author well, allowing her to draw out the possible reasons why King Arthur’s enchantresses have had such a lasting appeal – namely their feminist re-envisioning, their unique potential for reflection on the tensions and complexities of the modern family, and their role in the New Age neopagan religion of Goddess worship. Based on these factors, the author concludes that these women ‘have had a hugely successful century and their appeal looks set to continue into the new millennium’, and as we look forward to future representations of Morgan and her sisters, always with one eye on their medieval antecedents, Larrington’s study should prove a significant and enduring guidebook.
 

James Wade, U. of Cambridge

 

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