Abstract
The preceding chapters have argued that the history to which Geoffrey of Monmouth gave the gender-neutral title De gestis Britonum provides a feminist point of origin for the Arthurian legend because in it female figures are valued, share political power with males, receive sympathetic treatment from Geoffrey as narrator, and offer models of heroism that complement—and sometimes surpass—the models their male counterparts embody. This argument gains additional validity, however, if readers examine Geoffrey’s presentation of female figures in the Arthurian poem he wrote late in his career: the Vita Merlini. Although its “radically altered” version of the Merlinus who appears in Geoffrey’s history has sparked most of the scholarly interest in the poem, the pivotal roles that The Life of Merlin assigns to both Merlinus’s sister Ganieda and the ruler of Avalon and healer named Morgen should encourage more interest than they have to date. 1 Because this poem was composed after Empress Matilda failed to secure permanent possession of the English throne, its positive presentation of both female figures and the exercise of power by them opens up an intriguing interpretive possibility: that Geoffrey’s creation and positive presentation of female kings in the non-Arthurian portion of his history and sympathetic treatment of all the female figures in its Arthurian section could be products of a personal interest in developing female figures as well as of the historical moment at which he wrote Concerning the Deeds of the Britons.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Nikolai Tolstoy, “Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Merlin Legend,” Arthurian Literature 25 (2008): 1 [1–42].
A search of the Modern Language Association International Bibliography yielded 214 entries for ‘ Historia regum Britanniae ’ but only thirty-two for ‘ Vita Merlini,’ accessed February 14, 2011 http://www.mla.org/ bibliography. For an example of acknowledging The Life of Merlin ’s difference from other romances before discussing those other romances, see Carolyne Larrington, “The Enchantress, the Knight, and the Cleric: Authorial Surrogates in Arthurian Romance,” Arthurian Literature 25 (2008): 47 [43 – 65].
Clarke, name notes index to VM, ‘Robert de Chesney,’ p. 212; Michael J. Curley, Geoffrey of Monmouth (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1994), p. 2.
O. J. Padel, “Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Development of the Merlin Legend,” Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 51 (2006): 42 [37–65].
A. O. H. Jarman, “The Merlin Legend and the Welsh Tradition of Prophecy,” in The Arthur of the Welsh: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval Welsh Literature, ed. Rachel Bromwich, A. O. H. Jarman, and Brynley F. Roberts (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1991), p. 132 [117–45]; HRB 106.507–27.
Lorraine Kochanske Stock, “Civilization and Its Discontents: Cultural Primitivism and Merlin as a Wild Man in the roman de Silence,” Arthuriana 12.1 (2002): 25–26 and 33 [22–36]. According to Basil Clarke, Geoffrey’s later Merlin figure conflates Merlin Ambrosius with Merlin the fugitive, an elderly man called Merlin Calidonius or Merlin Silvester; although both Merlins have prophetic gifts that derive from the Welsh figure of Myrddin, only Merlin Ambrosius has connections with the “shadowy British political leader” often called Ambrosius or Aurelianus who appears in Gildas’s account of the British past as the hero of the siege of Badon Hill, introduction to VM, pp. vii–viii. For Gildas’s Ambrosius Aurelianus, see De excidio 25.3, pp. 98 and 28. Padel notes that Merlin Silvester is the common name for a wild-man figure called Lailoken, a figure from northern legend that Geoffrey of Monmouth might have been the first author to combine with the southern-Welsh prophet figure Myrddin, “Development of the Merlin Legend,” 41.
Lucy Allen Paton, “Merlin and Ganieda,” Modern Language Notes 18.6 (1903): 168 [163–69].
Ov id, Heroides and Amores, ed. and trans. Grant Showerman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press and London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1963), Heroides 7, pp. 82–99 (Dido); 2, pp. 18–31 (Phyllis); and 3, pp. 32–43 (Briseis).
Clarke notes a similar sequence in the Vita Gildae in which “one of Gildas’s brothers built himself a monastery, while two other brothers and a sister built themselves a group of oratories in the remotest part of the country,” name notes index to VM, ‘Gildas,’ p. 185 citing Caradoc of Llancarfan, Vita Gildae, in Two Lives of Gildas by a Monk of Ruys and Caradoc of Llancarfan, ed. and trans. Hugh Williams, 2 vols., Cymmrodorion Record Series (London: The Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1899; repr. Felinfach, UK: Llanerch Enterprises, 1990).
Based upon Geoffrey’s inclusion of several characters (Peredurus, Guennolous/Gwenddolau, and Rodarcus) in addition to Merlinus and Telgesinus/Taliesin whose names and roles derive from the Welsh tradition, Padel argues that this Welsh poem “may have provided part of Geoffrey’s inspiration” for The Life of Merlin, but he notes Geoffrey’s tendency to adapt material freely, “Development of the Merlin Legend,” 44 and 46. For the Welsh poem, see Ymddiddan Myrddin a Thaliesin, ed. A. O. H. Jarman (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1967); for an English translation, see “The Conversation of Myrddin and Taliesin” [Ymddiddan Myrddin a Thaliesin], trans. John K. Bollard, in The Romance of Merlin: An Anthology, ed. Peter Goodrich (New York & London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1990), pp. 16–19.
Susann T. Samples, “‘Problem Women’ in Heinrich von dem Türlin’s Diu Crône,” Arthuriana 11.4 (2001): 36 [23–38].
For the romance, see Heinrich von dem Türlin, Diu Crône, ed. Gottlob Heinrich Friedrich Scholl, Litterarischer Verein in Stuttgart 27 (Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi, 1966);
Heinrich von dem Türlin, The Crown: A Tale of Sir Gawein and King Arthur’s Court [Diu Crône], trans. John Wesley Thomas (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989).
Michael Twomey, “‘Morgan le Fay, Empress of the Wilderness’: A Newly Recovered Arthurian Text in London, BL Royal 12.C.ix,” Arthurian Literature 25 (2008): 68 [67–91].
Maureen Fries, “From The Lady to The Tramp: The Decline of Morgan le Fay in Medieval Romance,” Arthuriana 4.1 (1994): 1–18.
Cadden notes Dante’s intolerance of Tiresias’s gender-changes, Meanings of Sex Difference, p. 213. See Dante Alighieri, Inferno, trans. Robert and Jean Hollander, introduction and notes by Robert Hollander (New York: Doubleday, 2000), canto 20, lines 40–45.
Larrington, “The Enchantress,” 43; David Rollo, Glamorous Sorcery: Magic and Literacy in the High Middle Ages, Medieval Cultures 25 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), p. xii.
H. L. D. Ward, Catalogue of Romances in the British Museum 1, 3 vols. (London: British Museum, 1883), 1:283, cited by Clarke in his textual commentary on lines 1474 ff., 1479 ff., and 1485 ff., VM, pp. 153–54.
Copyright information
© 2012 Fiona Tolhurst
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Tolhurst, F. (2012). Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Life of Merlin as Feminist Text. In: Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Feminist Origins of the Arthurian Legend. Arthurian and Courtly Cultures. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230337947_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230337947_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-52887-5
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-33794-7
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)