The Myth of Morgan la Fey by Kristina Pérez (review)

Abstract

KRISTINA PEREZ, The Myth of Morgan la Fey. Arthurian and Courtly Cultures. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Pp. xiii, 262. isbn: 978-1-137-34025-2. $95.Presenting Morgan la Fey as the archetype of a number of powerful figures who combine nurturing and sexual roles, Kristina Perez's Myth of Morgan la Fey is an engaging study of ambivalent female identity in Arthurian romance. Perez systematically investigates the perennial mystery concerning the Morgan who both harms and heals King Arthur, and offers insightful readings of such alleged analogues as the Lady of the Lake, Morgause, and the Loathly Lady. Pursuing a subject that has generated such fine work as Lucy Allen Paton's Studies in the Fairy Mythology of Arthurian Romance and Carolyne Larrington's King Arthur's Enchantresses, Perez finds a distinctive voice by making structural use of psychoanalytic theory (particularly that of Melanie Klein) in a survey that ranges from early-medieval Irish mythology to contemporary popular culture.Directing scholars' eyes beyond the phallocentric Oedipal Complex to the 'Oresteian Position' shaped by the 'Law of the Mother' (15), Perez reads Morgan as a transcendent figure who both allures and unnerves 'male egos' by combining the roles of 'Mother' and 'Lover' (14). To explore the profoundly ambivalent role of Morgan in Arthurian literature, Perez uses Klein's concept of the Oresteian mother as offering both the 'good' breast of the 'nurturing' mother and the 'bad' breast of sexual aggressiveness (18). Perez opens with excellent analysis of Irish mythology, as she links the Morgan myth with the Celtic 'Sovereignty Goddess' (38) whose destructivity and sexuality were linked with rituals of kingship. Perez then turns to Old French romance, presenting the Celtic 'Goddess of Death' as re-emerging in the less 'lethal' but still powerful 'Fairy Mistress' of the Breton lais (43).While Perez sometimes risks being reductive by reading so many powerful female characters, such as Lanval's 'Fairy Mistress' (82) or the Lady of Hautdesert (113), as variants of an originary Morgan, she often generates fascinating insights by seeing the simultaneously savage and sexual Sovereignty Goddess at the heart of Morgan's myth. After comparing the 'tormented maternal roots' (64) of Morgan and the hybrid fairy-serpent Melusine, Perez builds a powerful case for a late-medieval splitting of the mythical mother figure who partakes in Mary's divinity as 'Intercessor' (101) into the malevolent Morgan and the benevolent Dame du Lac of the Vulgate texts. …