page_title: Morgan le Fay
section_title: Geoffrey, Chrétien and other early authors
hierarchical_section_title: Morgan le Fay / In medieval and Renaissance literature / Geoffrey, Chrétien and other early authors
context_page_description: Morgan le Fay, alternatively known as Morgan[n]a, Morgain[a/e], Morg[a]ne, Morgant[e], Morge[i]n, and Morgue[in] among other names and spellings, is a powerful enchantress in the Arthurian legend. Early appearances of Morgan do not elaborate her character beyond her role as a goddess, a fay, a witch, or a sorceress, generally benevolent and related to King Arthur as his magical saviour and protector. Her prominence increased over time, as did her moral ambivalence, and in some texts there is an evolutionary transformation of her to an antagonist, particularly as portrayed in cyclical prose such as the Lancelot-Grail and the Post-Vulgate Cycle. A significant aspect in many of Morgan's medieval and later iterations is the unpredictable duality of her nature, with potential for both good and evil.
  Her character may have been rooted in Welsh mythology as well as other earlier myths and historical figures. The earliest account, by Geoffrey of Monmouth in Vita Merlini, refers to Morgan in conjunction with the Isle of Apples, which is where Arthur was carried after being fatally wounded in the Battle of Camlann.
context_section_description: Morgan first appears by name in Vita Merlini, written by Norman-Welsh cleric Geoffrey of Monmouth. Purportedly an account of the life of Merlin, it elaborates some episodes from Geoffrey's more famous earlier work, Historia Regum Britanniae (1136). In Historia, Geoffrey relates how King Arthur, gravely wounded by Mordred at the Battle of Camlann, is taken off to the blessed Isle of Apple Trees (Latin Insula Pomorum), Avalon, to be healed; Avalon (Ynys Afallach in the Welsh versions of Historia) is also mentioned as the place where Arthur's sword Excalibur was forged. (Geoffrey's Arthur does have a sister, whose name here is Anna, but the possibility of her being a predecessor to Morgan is unknown.) In Vita Merlini, Geoffrey describes this island in more detail and names Morgen as the chief of the nine magical queen sisters who dwell there, ruling in their own right. Morgen agrees to take Arthur, delivered to her by Taliesin to have him revived, but says it might take a long time. She and her sisters are capable of shapeshifting and flying ("like Daedalus, on strange wings"), and (at least seemingly) use their powers only for good. Morgen is also said to be a learned mathematician and to have taught astronomy to her fellow nymph (nymphae) sisters, whose names are Moronoe, Mazoe, Gliten, Glitonea, Gliton, Tyronoe, Thiten and Thiton. In creating this Virgin Mary-type character and her sisters, Geoffrey might have been influenced by the first-century Roman cartographer Pomponius Mela, who has described an oracle at the Île de Sein off the coast of Brittany and its nine virgin priestesses believed by the continental Celtic Gauls to have the power to cure disease and perform various other awesome magic, such as controlling the sea through incantations, foretelling the future, and changing themselves into any animal.
  According to a theory postulated by R. S. Loomis, Geoffrey was not the original inventor of Morgan's character, which had already existed in hypothetical unrecorded stories of her as Arthur's fairy saviour, or even also his fairy godmother (her earliest shared supernatural ability being able to traverse on or under water). Such stories being told by wandering storytellers (as credited by Gerald of Wales) would then influence various authors writing independently from each other, especially since Vita Merlini was a relatively little-known text. Geoffrey's description of Morgen is notably very similar to that of Medea in Benoît de Sainte-Maure's epic poem Roman de Troie (c. 1155–1160), a story of the ancient Trojan War in which Morgan herself makes an unexplained appearance in this second known text featuring her. As Morgan the fairy (Orva la fée, likely a corruption of a spelling such as *Morgua in the original-text), there she first lustfully loves the Trojan hero Hector and gifts him a wonderful horse, but then pursues him with hate after he rejects her. The abrupt way in which she is used suggests Benoît did expect his aristocratic audience to have been already familiar with her character. Another ancient-times appearance can be found in the much later Perceforest (1330s), within the fourth book which is set in Britain during Julius Caesar's invasions, where the fairy Morgane lives in the isle of Zeeland and has learned her magic from Zephir. Here, she has a daughter named Morganette and an adoptive son named Passelion, who in turn have a son named Morgan, described as an ancestor of the Lady of the Lake.
  In Jaufre, an early Occitan language Arthurian romance dated c. 1180, Morgan seems to appear, without being named other than introducing herself as the "Fairy of Gibel" (fada de Gibel, the mount Gibel being a version of the Avalon motif as in later works), as the ruler of an underground kingdom who takes the protagonist knight Jaufre (Griflet) through a fountain to gift him her magic ring of protection. In the romance poem Lanzelet, written by the end of the 12th century by Ulrich von Zatzikhoven, the infant Lancelot is spirited away by a water fairy (merfeine in Old High German) and raised in her paradise islan
caption: Frank William Warwick's Voyage of King Arthur and Morgan le Fay to the Isle of Avalon (1888)
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