Morgan le Fay

In Arthurian legend, Morgan le Fay, alternatively known as Morgaine, Morgain, Morgana and a slew of related name variants, is a powerful sorceress and sometime antagonist of King Arthur and Guinevere.

Morgan is the daughter of Arthur's mother, the Lady Igraine, and her first husband, Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall; Arthur is her half brother by Igraine and Uther Pendragon. Morgan has two older sisters, Elaine and Morgause, the latter of which is the mother of Gawain and the traitor Mordred. In Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur and elsewhere, she is married, unhappily, to King Urien of Gore and Ywain is her son.

Early accounts of Morgan

The character first appears as "Morgen" in the 12th century Latin Vita Merlini (Life of Merlin) by Geoffrey of Monmouth, where she is the first of nine sisters who rule Avalon, The Fortunate Isle or the Isle of Apples (cf. Garden of the Hesperides), where in fact she is the sole sister with a definite presence. Geoffrey presents her as a typical fay, a healer and even a shapeshifter. In early tales she is generally a benevolent presence; her healing ointment is used to cure the hero in Chrétien de Troyes' Yvain, le Chevalier au Lion (Yvain, the Knight of the Lion). In Geoffrey's earlier Historia Regum Britanniae he claimed Arthur had sailed off to Avalon after receiving mortal wounds at the Battle of Camlann; later authors link Morgan to this event. Even the authors of the prose romances, who typically use Morgan as a villain, maintain her benevolence in this case.

The Welsh Triads preserve an interesting story about the birth of Owain mab Urien (Ywain), known in later writings as the son of Morgan. King Urien finds a beautiful fairy woman standing in a ford, bound to wash clothes there until she conceives a child by a Christian king. He has his way with her, and returns a year later to find his infant children, Owain and his twin sister Morvydd. The woman was Modron, a figure known elsewhere as a Welsh goddess whose father (Avalloc) is king of an otherworld very much like Avalon. This may represent a link between the Arthurian Morgan and authentic Welsh tradition, but it must be noted that Morgan appears alongside Urien and Ywain in the French romances for decades before a familial connection was made, and that the Triads' manuscripts date well after this association had been established in French.

While frequently assumed to be related to the Irish war goddess the Morrigan because of their similar names, Arthurian scholars agree that she is more likely descended from Modron, a mother goddess of Celtic myth, and the strong fay tradition among the Celts. A group of Breton water fairies is called the Morganes.

Morgan in later medieval literature

"Medieval Christianity had a difficult time assimilating a benevolent enchantress," Brian Rise points out at pantheon.org. The Vulgate Cycle of Arthurian tales finds Morgan still on good terms with Arthur but angry at Guinevere for breaking a romance with one of her lovers. She tries alternately to seduce Lancelot and to expose his affair with the queen, often through magical means. In the Prose Tristan, she delivers to Arthur's court a magic drinking horn from which no unfaithful lady can drink without spilling, hoping to reveal the infidelity.

Following the Vulgate Cycle, Sir Thomas Malory gives as a motivation for Morgan's anger toward Arthur that he had killed one of her lovers. Through magic and mortal means, she tries to arrange his downfall, most famously when she arranges for her lover Accolon to obtain the sword Excalibur and use it against Arthur in single combat. Failing in this, Morgan throws Excalibur's protective scabbard into a lake.

The Fay turns up throughout the High and Late Middle Ages, generally in works related to the cycles of Arthur or Charlemagne. At the end of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, it is revealed that the entire supernatural episode has been instigated by Morgan as a test for Arthur and his knights. In one chanson de geste starring Ogier the Dane, she takes the hero to her mystical island palace to be her lover.

Modern appearances of Morgan

Modern interpretations of the Arthurian myth sometimes assign to Morgan the role of seducing Arthur and giving birth to the wicked Mordred, though originally (as in Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur) it was Morgause who did this. (According to the legend, Mordred grew to manhood away from Arthur's court, and eventually killed his father, bringing an end to the Arthurian age.)

In John Boorman's film Excalibur, 1981 Morgan takes up one of her traditional roles as Merlin's student, though her competition with her mentor assumes a new prominence in the film. Morgaine is the protagonist of Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon and she is a central character in Gene Wolfe's novel Castleview, a retelling of the Arthurian myth set in modern day America. She has been fairly prolific in comic books, for example Treasures of Britain by Simon Bisley, where she helps the hero Slaine recover her brother's lost artifacts. She has also appeared in comics from the two main comic book publishers in the USA: In DC Comics, Morgayne Le Fey is a villainess that has battled The Demon and Wonder Woman, while Marvel Comics has long featured Morgan Le Fay as one of their biggest female threats, with notable appearances in comics starring Spider-Woman and The Avengers. In recent years Morgan has been adopted by some feminists (such as Bradley) as a representation of female power; in this context she is sometimes connected to interpretations of Celtic feminine spirituality. Most recently, Morgan has reappeared in the middle-grade novel The Revenge of the Shadow King.

A series of (27 at last count) very young childrens books (designed to be first reader chapter books) called Magic Tree House uses Morgan le Fay as a plot device. She sends two kids on a variety of adventures. These books are popular among pre-K teachers as well as their students.

References

Rachel Bromwich (1963) Trioedd Ynys Prydein: The Triads of the Island of Britain, University Of Wales Press. ISBN 0708313868. Triad: Peniarth 147

External links

Gourt Home::Gourt :: Morgan le Fay

Early accounts of Morgan

Morgan in later medieval literature

Modern appearances of Morgan

See also

References

External links