The Song of Guinevere: A Defense of Arthur's Wife in Verse by Alicia Snow (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS83 Professor Lehmann is an excellent translator. But occasionally there are more of these poems than the narrative requires, and they seem to be there for their own sake and not for the sake of the novel, as if in this instance scholarly instincts have taken precedence over literary ones—an impression enforced by a list of'manuscript sources of early English, Irish, and Welsh poetry quoted in Blessed Bastard.' Nevertheless, Blessed Bastard is a very readable novel and one that achieves the difficult goal of making the character of Galahad a man ofwhom Lancelot—and Lehmann—can be proud. ALAN LUPACK The University of Rochester Alicia snow, The SongofGuinevere: A DefenseofArthur's Wife in Verse. San Francisco: Belgrave House, 1999. Pp. 588; 6 illus. isbn: 0-9660643-6-4. $29.95 (paper); 16 compact discs, isbn: 0-9660643-5-6. $49.95. 'Not another book about the Arthur-Guinevere-Lancelot triangle!' you say. Yes, but with a difference. Alicia Snow's The Song ofGuinevere is written in poetry, a form which dominated English Arthurian literature until about 1940 when it virtually disappeared. Furthermore, it is written from the woman's perspective, providing the first detailed, psychologically convincing biography of Arthur's queen. Snow initiated The Song ofGuinevere as a riposte to Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Idylb ofthe King, choosing the same blank verse narrative form (with occasional rhyme) divided into books. She is no rival in the art ofpoetry, lacking the Victorian's philosophical grandeur and pictorial power. But her serviceable iambic pentameter, sometimes prone to cliché, effectively mimics the diction of ordinary discourses to establish the realistic mode which pervades this work and makes it so accessible. Major sources are the Historia Brittonum (with Arthur's battle sites providing the geographical structure) and Malory's Morte Darthur, stripped of Celtic magic, chivalric entertainments, courtly love and Grail allegory. The setting is Dark Age Britain from 486 A.D., when twelve-year-old Guinevere is introduced, to 520, when the exiled queen ruefully sums up her life. There are vivid localisations such as the civilized villa at Aquae Sulis (Bath) where Arthur's aunt Paulina maintains a Roman style ofliving or the demonic Bassas Fort where terrified Britons are besieged by the Angle invaders, but setting is subordinate to characterization and plot. (Robert Allen Gordons six colour illustrations, romantic and anachronistic, fail to evoke the menace of disintegration). Neither a figurehead nor a destroyer, Guinevere is distinguished by her role as healer. Educated in Latin and Greek, she begins as a child to learn from Mettodora, a woman trained in Roman medicine, then from books (Galen, Hippocrates), nuns, and the practical experience oftreating Arthur's wounded warriors, animals, women and children, even enemies. The medical lore is authentic—ointment of sempervivium and rose oil for the nuns' scorched skins, infusions of betany and goldenrod for wounds, anaesthetic mandrake root, wine and henbane to ease the pain ofcauterising, suturing, and amputation. A royal beauty, a scholar, a harpist, a 84ARTHURIANA just ruler of the realm inherited from her mother, a builder, a peacemaker, a loving and obedient wife, Guinevere provides everything Arthur requires except a son. To the archetypal roles of dux bellorum, Christianissimus rex, Pendragon, Conqueror, golden-haired Arthur adds irresistible charisma. Lancelot, 'a man ofstunning power in the battlefield,' intelligent, sensitive, exquisitely attuned to the demands ofhonour, completes the triangle. Snow intensifies the tragedy by stressing the characters' sympathetic aspects so that the reader will be emotionally strained as the conflict between love and loyalty develops. Within the familiar plot lines involving Morgause and Mordred, Gawain and his brothers, Lancelot, Elaine and Galahad, new people are introduced to individualize the protagonists. Interest is maintained as well by treating traditional motifs in original ways. For example, the image of the Virgin Mary which, as the Annales Cambriae record, Arthur carried into battle, becomes evidence ofthe king's adultery with the fair Angelica, as does the Torre-like peasant boy, 'too fine to be a shepherd's son,' who bears Arthur's bright blond curls. Guinevere's kidnapping, one ofthe oldest motifs on the evidence ofthe Modena archivolt, is the crisis which clarifies moral evaluations. Transposed from a courtly milieu...