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This study re-examines Morgan le Fay in early medieval and contemporary Arthurian sources, arguing that she embodies the concerns of each era even as she defies social and gender expectations. Hebert uses leFay as a lens to explore traditional ideas of femininity, monstrousness, resistance, identity, and social expectations for women and men alike.
This study re-examines Morgan le Fay in early medieval and contemporary Arthurian sources, arguing that she embodies the concerns of each era even as she defies social and gender expectations. Hebert uses leFay as a lens to explore traditional ideas of femininity, monstrousness, resistance, identity, and social expectations for women and men alike.
"Shapeshifter: The Manifestation of Morgan le Fay" focuses on the roles of Morgan le Fay in selected medieval through contemporary Arthurian works. Morgan's ever-changing portrayals employ and confound dichotomies and archetypes that attempt to restrict identity. The term "shapeshifter" evokes Morgan's ability to evade the shape(s) others--authors, critics, and characters--attempt to impose upon her, to use the expectations of others against them, and to move among, outside of, and around assumptions as necessary. This versatility also demonstrates by comparison how culturally determined definitions of identity inhibit other characters (such as knights) with whom she interacts. Traditionally, Morgan's character is viewed as devolving from a benign or even positive role in Latin sources such as the Vita Merlini to a malicious one in the Vulgate and Malory. A careful look at the Vita and similar sources reveals, however, that complexity infuses her character from the beginning. Morgan's representations, rooted in Celtic and Greco-Roman mythology and folklore, create ambiguities that remain evident in later medieval sources. Morgan and her analogues, the Loathly Lady and fairy mistress, teach knights such as Gawain and Sir Launfal more complex lessons about themselves and their world than life at a rigid court allows. Fluid and variable, her "marginalized" position as denizen of the forest grants her the power and freedom to critique social strictures; her ability to ignore the constraints placed on women enables her to show knights how their identities restrict them. In Malory, she extends this role by acting as political advisor to Arthur, reminding him of his own self-imposed limits created by his refusal to address the damaging disloyalty endangering his rule. Enticing hints of Morgan's multivalence appear in the Renaissance and following eras, even as representations of female characters retreat to archetypes such as the femme fatale in Spenser's Faerie Queene and Romantic and Victorian poetry and art. In the modern and contemporary eras, Morgan's roles in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and three fantasy novels suggest a tantalizing potential for mutability that is simultaneously undercut by societal and authorial concerns.
Invoke the Morrigan—the Celtic embodiment of the victory, strength, and power of the Divine Feminine—and be transformed by her fierce and magnificent energy. In this comprehensive, hands-on guide to Celtic Witchcraft, Stephanie Woodfield invites you to explore the Morrigan's rich history and origins, mythology, and magic. Discover the hidden lessons and spiritual mysteries of the Dark Goddess as you perform guided pathworkings, rituals, and spells compatible with any magical path. Draw on the unique energies of the Morrigan's many expressions—her three main aspects of Macha, Anu, and Badb; the legendary Morgan Le Fay; and her other powerful guises. From shapeshifting and faery magic to summoning a lover and creating an Ogham oracle, the dynamic and multifaceted Dark Goddess will bring empowering wisdom and enchantment to your life and spiritual practice.
Descended from Celtic goddesses and the fairies of folklore, the literary character of Morgan le Fay has been most commonly perceived as a witch and a one-dimensional villainess who plagues King Arthur and his court, rather than recognized as the legendary King's enchanted healer and otherworldly guardian. Too often the complexity of Morgan le Fay and her supernatural abilities are lost, her character neglected as peripheral. As a literary figure of imaginative design this thesis explores Morgan le Fay as a unique "window" into the medieval mindset, whereby one can recover both medieval understandings of magic and female magicians. By analyzing her role in key sources from the twelfth to fifteenth century, this thesis uses Morgan le Fay to recover nuanced perceptions of the supernatural in medieval England that embraced the ambiguity of a pagan past and remained insulated from continental constructions of demonic witchcraft.
Vita Merlini, or The Life of Merlin, is a work by the Norman-Welsh author Geoffrey of Monmouth, composed in Latin around AD 1150. It retells incidents from the life of the Brythonic seer Merlin, and is based on traditional material about him. Merlin is described as a prophet in the text. There are a number of episodes in which he loses his mind and lives in the wilderness like a wild animal, like Nebuchadnezzar in the Book of Daniel. It is also the first work to describe the Arthurian sorceress Morgan le Fay, as Morgen. Geoffrey had written of Merlin in his two previous works, the Prophetiae Merlini, purported to be a series of prophecies from the sage, and the Historia Regum Britanniae, which is the first work presenting a link between Merlin and King Arthur. The Vita Merlini presents an account of Merlin much more faithful to the Welsh traditions about Myrddin Wyllt, the archetype behind Geoffrey's composite figure of Merlin. Whereas the Historia had Merlin associating with Arthur, his father Uther Pendragon, and his uncle Ambrosius in the 5th century, the Vita's timeframe is during the late 6th century, and includes references to various figures from that period, including Gwenddoleu and Taliesin. Geoffrey attempts to synchronize the Vita with his earlier work by having Merlin mention he had been with Arthur long before.
'I am Morgan the Fay. The wicked witch, the embodiment of evil. And yet. I am the queen who takes Arthur in my arms for healing. Some editing of the story will clearly be necessary.' Morgan stands by Dozmary Pool after the Battle of Camlann, pleading with the dying Arthur to trust her. Only she can heal him. Is her price too high? As she retraces the bitterness and misunderstanding between them, she throws new light on the tales which the first four narrators have told. But that's not all. There have been countless other versions of her story, from prehistoric myths to contemporary novels. With scornful irony Morgan show us how their authors have changed her from a wise and healing ruler to a malignant sorceress and derided temptress. Can Arthur see the truth in time?
King Arthur was not an Englishman, but a Celtic warrior, according to Loomis, whose research into the background of the Arthurian legend reveals findings which are both illuminating and highly controversial. The author sees the vegetarian goddess as the prototype of many damsels in Arthurian romance, and Arthur's knights as the gods of sun and storm. If Loomis's arguments are accepted, where does this leave the historic Arthur?
This book analyzes the gendered transformation of magical figures occurring in Arthurian romance in England from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. In the earlier texts, magic is predominantly a masculine pursuit, garnering its user prestige and power, but in the later texts, magic becomes a primarily feminine activity, one that marks its user as wicked and heretical. This project explores both the literary and the social motivations for this transformation, seeking an answer to the question, 'why did the witch become wicked?' Heidi Breuer traverses both the medieval and early modern periods and considers the way in which the representation of literary witches interacted with the culture at large, ultimately arguing that a series of economic crises in the fourteenth century created a labour shortage met by women. As women moved into the previously male-dominated economy, literary backlash came in the form of the witch, and social backlash followed soon after in the form of Renaissance witch-hunting. The witch figure serves a similar function in modern American culture because late-industrial capitalism challenges gender conventions in similar ways as the economic crises of the medieval period.
From the beautiful apsaras of Hindu myth to the swan maidens of European fairy tales, stories of flying women-some carried by wings, others by clouds, rainbows, floating scarves, and flying horses-reveal the perennial fascination with and ambivalence about female power and sexuality. In Women Who Fly, Serinity Young examines the motif of the flying woman as it appears in a wide variety of cultures and historical periods, in legends, myths, rituals, sacred narratives, and artistic productions. She considers supernatural women like the Valkyries of Norse legend, who transport men to immortality; winged deities like the Greek goddesses Iris and Nike; figures of terror like the Furies, witches, and succubi; airborne Christian mystics; and wayward, dangerous women like Lilith and Morgan le Fay. Looking beyond the supernatural, Young examines the modern mythology surrounding twentieth-century female aviators like Amelia Earhart and Hanna Reitsch. Throughout, Young demonstrates that female power has always been inextricably linked with female sexuality and that the desire to control it is a pervasive theme in these stories. This is vividly depicted, for example, in the twelfth-century Niebelungenlied, in which the proud warrior-queen Brünnhilde loses her great physical strength when she is tricked into surrendering her virginity. Even in the twentieth-century the same idea is reflected in the exploits of the comic book and film character Wonder Woman who, Young suggests, retains her physical strength only because her love for fellow aviator Steve Trevor goes unrequited. The first book to systematically chronicle the figure of the flying woman in myth, literature, art, and pop culture, Women Who Fly offers a fresh look at the ways in which women have both influenced and been understood by society and religious traditions throughout the ages and around the world.