Abstract
Given the ambiguous nature of Morgan le Fay, that she is featured in Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur is appropriate: both book and author are wrapped in mystery. Answers to questions of which version of Malory’s text is the most authoritative, or even if it is a unified work or simply a series of stories, cannot be answered with any conviction. Nor is it easy to determine which of several candidates is the author of the Morte, perhaps partially because the most likely suspect was a knight who was also a thief and a rapist, but critics generally agree with P. J. C. Field’s certainty that the author of the Morte must have been one Sir Thomas Malory of Newbold Revell.1 While virtually nothing is known about this Malory’s formative years, it is likely that one of his uncles, Sir Robert, provided a model for the idea of chivalry in Malory’s Morte. Sir Robert, an uncle who was a professional soldier and a member of the Hospitallers, probably provided early inspiration for Malory’s focus on knighthood.2
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Notes
P. J. C. Field, The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Malory (Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 1993), 35.
Sir Thomas Malory, Malory: Works, ed. Eugene Vinaver (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), v.
As mentioned, Geoffrey de Charny is not contemporary with Malory, but Maurice Keen also cites him as a good model for knighthood. See Maurice Keen, Chivalry (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984), 15.
Dorsey Armstrong, Gender and the Chivalric Community in Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003), 6.
Christina Hardyment, Malory: The Life and Times of King Arthur’s Chronicler (London: Harper Collins, 2005), 33.
Felicity Riddy, “Contextualizing Le Morte Darthur: Empire and Civil War,” in A Companion to Malory, ed. Elizabeth Archibald and A. S. G. Edwards (Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 1996), 66, 55–73.
Geoffroi de Charny, The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny: Text, Context, and Translation, ed. and trans. Richard W. Kaeuper and Elspeth Kennedy (University Park, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 33. All quotations are from this edition.
See Joanna S. Stein, “The Ambiguous Forest: Marvelous Landscapes in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur,” BA Honors Thesis, Macalester College, 2006, http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005&context =english_honors, 14.
Myra Olstead, “Morgan le Fay in Malory’s Morte Darthur,” Bulletin Bibliographique de la Societé Internationale Arthurienne 19 (1967), 128–38.
Catherine LaFarge, “The Hand of the Huntress: Repetition and Malory’s Morte Darthur,” in New Feminist Discourses: Critical Essays on Theories and Texts, ed. Isobel Armstrong (New York: Routledge, 1992), 264.
Kenneth Hodges, Forging Chivalric Communities in Malory’s Morte d’Arthur (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Hodges points out that “an analysis of the imagined feminine is not the same as an analysis of women. Characters are seldom ideal; it would be considerably more surprising to find a perfectly feminine woman than to discover that many women do not fit neatly into either the positive or negative stereotypes of the gender. While Morgan is a troubling character, such ‘unfeminine’ women are not always condemned, and there are numerous assertive women praised in Le Morte DArthur. Potential victim (and thus potential object of heroic rescue) is not the only role good women can play, and the other roles that develop allow fuller participation in chivalric society” (36–37).
Roberta Davidson, “Reading like a Woman in Malory’s Morte Darthur,” Arthuriana 16.1 (2006), 21.
Frederic Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981), 115.
K. S. Whetter, “On Misunderstanding Malory’s Balyn,” in Arthurian Studies lx: Reviewing Le Morte Darthur,” ed. K. S. Whetter and Raluca L. Radulescu (Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 2005), 149–62.
Edward Donald Kennedy, “Malory’s King Mark and King Arthur,” in King Arthur: A Casebook, ed. Edward Donald Kennedy (New York: Garland, 1996), 139–71.
See also Norris J. Lacy, “The Ambiguous Fortunes of Arthur: The Lancelot-Grail and Beyond,” in The Fortunes of King Arthur, ed. Norris J. Lacy (New York: D. S. Brewer, 2005), 94–205.
It is unclear in Malory which may be the case initially. Even when Arthur is made to see Lancelot and Guenevere’s betrayal, he hesitates to act and then repeatedly allows a loophole—Lancelot’s prowess—to save Guenevere. For further discussion of what Arthur knew and when, see Elise Francisca Wilhelmina Maria VanderVen-Ten Bensel, The Character of King Arthur in Literature (New York: Haskell House, 1966), 147;
and Ginger Thornton, “The Weakening of the King: Arthur’s Disintegration in The Book of Sir Tristram,” Arthurian Yearbook 1 (1991), 135–48.
For a discussion of Morgan as the focus for disloyalty, see especially Debra A. Benko, “Morgan le Fay and King Arthur in Malory’s Works and Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon: Sibling Discord and the Fall of the Round Table,” in The Significance of Sibling Relationships in Literature, ed. JoAnna Stephens and Janet Doubler Ward (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green Popular Press, 1992), 23–31,
and Henry Grady Morgan, “The Role of Morgan le Fay in Malory’s Morte Darthur,” Southern Quarterly 2 (1963–64), 150–68.
Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study of Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957), 7.
Elizabeth A. Pochoda, “Medieval Political Theory and the Arthurian Legend,” in Arthurian Propaganda as an Historical Ideal of Life (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971), 37–39.
C. Stephen Jager, The Origins of Courtliness: Civilizing Trends and the Formation of Courtly Ideals 939–1210 (University Park, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), 239.
Geraldine Heng, “Enchanted Ground: The Feminine Subtext in Malory,” in Arthurian Women: A Casebook. Ed. Thelma S. Fenster (New York: Routledge, 1996), 97–113. 106 Davidson, “Reading like a Woman in Malory’s Morte Darthur,” 23 –27.
Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love, trans. John Jay Perry (New York: Ungar, 1941).
Chrétien de Troyes, “The Knight of the Cart,” in The Complete Romances of Chrétien de Troyes, trans. David Staines (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 215.
For Lancelot’s paintings, see vol. 5 of the Alexandre Micha, ed., Lancelot: Roman en prose du XIIIe siecle, vols. 1–8 (Geneva: Droz, 1978–82), LXXXVI.
For Arthur’s viewing of the paintings, see Jean Frappier, ed., Le Mort le Roi Artu: Roman du XIIIe Siecle (Geneva: Droz, 1964), 55–66.
She takes him when he “lyeth undir the appil-tre slepyng.” This is a common device in medieval stories; Orfeo’s wife is taken by the fairy king when she falls asleep under an ympe-tre. See Anne Laskaya and Eve Salisbury, eds., The Middle English Breton Lays (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1995), 27. Trees are one of the places that are neither here nor there, this nor that, where Morgan can exercise power. Trees and forests are liminal locales of mystery, uncertainty, and adventure, all qualities of magical places and therefore the perfect place for Morgan to locate her power. The forest also is traditionally a place of the Other. Lancelot has stepped out of Arthur’s realm and into a place where action is not so restricted, where loopholes in the chivalric code as well as entrances into the Otherworld can be found.
Olstead, “Morgan Le Fay in Malory’s Morte Darthur,” 136; see also Jerome Mandel, “The Idea of Coherence and the Feminization of Knights in Malory’s ‘Alexander the Orphan,’ The Arthurian Yearbook III (1993): 91–105.
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© 2013 Jill M. Hebert
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Hebert, J.M. (2013). Morgan in Malory. In: Morgan Le Fay, Shapeshifter. Arthurian and Courtly Cultures. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137022653_4
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