King Arthur's Enchantresses: Morgan and Her Sisters in Arthurian Tradition by Carolyne Larrington (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS1Ol in the field. With such a focused approach, Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan offers a fascinating analysis of Elis Gruffydd's chronicle, in light of the sources available to that Welshman serving at Calais and steeped in the sixteenth-century debate about Arthur's historicity. In an equally fascinating argument on hybridism in late romances, focusing on the Chevalier du Papegau ('The Knight ofthe Parrot'), Jane H.M. Taylor traces a shift from the quest's emphasis on self-testing to the travel narrative's inclusion ofa narrator who participates in marvelous discoveries. Edward Donald Kennedy cogently demonstrates why Robert de Boron's Christianized version of the grail story had so little influence on English chroniclers other than Hardyng, while Christopher A. Snyder challenges the assumption that the Arthur of the Nennian Historia Brittonum is not a king. Two careful essays reach more tentative conclusions: NorrisJ. Lacy ties the king's lack ofemotion in Lancelot-Grail to his public role and veiled private life, while Siân Echard suggests that Geoffrey of Monmouth's cyclic view ofhistory owes more to the discomforting spin ofFortune's wheel than to God. Despite an eclectic sense of audience within the volume, each essay achieves its purpose. TheFortunes is balanced by treatment ofthe Latin, Welsh, French, German, and English traditions, with scholars deftly handling the crossovers, as does Dennis Green when he surveys how British and French romancers mimic the truth claims of eyewitnesses before examining Hartman and Gottfried's use of such parodie techniques to blur the lines of historia andfabuh. The volume is rounded out by Joan Tasker Grimbert's contribution, which compares Lancelot and Guinevere's passion to that ofTristan and Yseut, in the French prose romances and the Italian TavolaRhonda. Alison Stones begins her essaywith manuscript illustrations ofArthur on Fortune's wheel, but as these are few, she moves to a too general treatment of the ways the king is depicted in the Lancelot-Grailcycle. In contrast, the best essays directly treat Fortune or mimic her wheel's turn in their cyclic structure. She and Arthur are lucky in having their fate handled by an editor as deft as Lacy. KAREN CHEREWATUK St. OlafCollege carolyne larrington, King Arthur's Enchantresses: Morgan and Her Sisters in Arthurian Tradition. London: LB. Tauris, 2006. Pp. viii, 264. isbn: 978-1-84511113 -7. $35. £18.99. In King Arthur's Enchantresses, Carolyne Larrington surveys representations of Morgan Ie Fay, the Lady of the Lake, the Viviane/Niviene figure, and Morgause in medieval literature, Victorian re-imaginings, and modern popular culture. The introduction points out that in medieval texts the enchantresses are not witches but aristocratic women who have learned magic and whose actions defy traditional concepts of feminine behavior. Chapter one defines natural and demonic magic; identifies several magical elements appearing with one or more ofthe enchantresses, such as herbs, rings, enclosure, and shape-shifting; and concludes with the insightful claim that governs the remaining chapters: the magic performed by these Arthurian enchantresses 'cannot escape from central and contemporary questions about gender 102ARTHURIANA and power' (28). The next three chapters focus on Morgan, while the fifth concentrates on Viviane, the huntress/Niviene-figure, and the Lady of the Lake. Chapter 6 is devoted to Morgause, for although she is not an enchantress in medieval works, she becomes one in some modern media. Chapter 7 takes up Victorian literary and pictorial treatments of 'Vivien.' The final chapter turns to representations of the enchantresses from Twain's 1889 Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court to the wicker 'Nine Morgens' carried in the procession at the 2003 Glastonbury Goddess Festival. In developing the chapters on the medieval texts, Larrington summarizes episodes involving the enchantresses and weaves in interpretations based on selected scholarship as she emphasizes gendered aspects. For instance, in chapter three, we hear about women's words, such as Morgan's 'magically enhanced words of enchantment' keeping unfaithful knights in coerced fidelity in the VaIsans Retour (55), but Enide's cousin speaking only in the 'powerless sphere of female conversation' when her lover, Maboagrain, is liberated in Chretien's Erec (53). The second chapter's topic of Morgan and Arthur's sibling relationship is a welcome...