Non-Fiction

This forthcoming non-fiction title is based on my PhD thesis and scrutinizes the evolution of the portrayal of Morgan la Fey in medieval Arthurian legend from her origins as Sovereignty Goddess in Celtic mythology to her euhemerization as a wicked sorceress, which is a result of her function as both a Mother and a lover. The Myth of Morgan la Fey is represented by Deirdre Mullane of Mullane Literary Associates.

Praise for The Myth of Morgan la Fey

This fascinating and readable book traces the figure of Morgan la Fey from her origins in Irish Sovereignty legends via her development in medieval Arthurian romances through to her representation in modern popular culture, showing how the fairy serves as a focus for deep-seated anxieties about women and the feminine.  This book draws authoritatively on many disciplines to throw new light on our ideas about love, power, and motherhood even today.  Most importantly, it shows how many aspects of modern culture which we take for granted have their roots deep in Celtic mythology and its medieval elaboration. This book is recommended for anyone interested in the ethics of gender, the development of ideas about women and the feminine, and the long history of the Arthurian legends.

Sarah Kay, Professor of French, New York University 

Kristina Pérez hits all the right notes in her work on Morgan la Fey and she does so with an irresistibly light touch.  She understands the Celtic origins and the French and English versions in which the story has come down to us and she brings to bear on the material a balanced feminist reading plus a rich understanding of the complexity of the character.  Pérez has all the scholarly apparatus down and she also visibly loves her material.  This is a classic study of a misunderstood woman that offers a unique view of how well the medieval world, that often seems so distant from us, can touch and inform a modern sensibility.

Dr. Bill Burgwinkle, Head of Department of French, University of Cambridge

This book takes a character everyone has heard of – Morgan la Fey – and reveals in an accessible and engaging way the unknown secrets of a female sorceress who has bewitched writers for over a millennium. 

Dr. Michael Scott, Affiliated Lecturer at the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge and host of “Guilty Pleasures: Luxury in the Ancient Greek and Medieval Worlds” (BBC4)

Morgan la Fey is an expression of full female subjectivity and her negative portrayal represents the inability of Western culture to accept the desire of the Mother as a Woman. The thesis begins with a survey of the representation of the Sovereignty Goddess in early Irish and Welsh material and its transmission to the Breton lais, where Morgan, or Morgan figures, assume the Sovereignty Goddess role opposite a series of Arthurian heroes; next, it turns to an analysis of Morgan in the Old French Vulgate cycle. And, finally, this thesis considers the influence of Morgan as Sovereignty Goddess on the anonymous Middle English poems, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Weddynge of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell. In each instance, the thesis employs the feminist psychoanalytical tradition – most notably the work of Melanie Klein, Karen Horney and Luce Irigaray – to resituate Morgan la Fey within the Arthurian tradition.

Through a reworking of Kleinian theory the concept of a preoedipal oral Oresteian Position, which is characterized by the internal splitting of the child’s unconscious, is developed to better understand the relationship between the Arthurian hero and Morgan la Fey; she becomes the hero’s Oresteian Mother when he takes up the Oresteian Position, which is unsustainable and traumatic. This thesis demonstrates that the perverse solution to the Oresteian Mother undertaken by various heroes is to enter into a masochistic relationship with her, as in the Breton lais and Celtic Sovereignty tales; another strategy utilized in the Vulgate Cycle and other twelfth and thirteenth century Romances to deal with the Oresteian Mother is to split Woman into the nurturing Mother and thefemme fatale. However, neither of these techniques for handling the Orestian Mother is ultimately successful; the result, as demonstrated in the Middle English poems, is a catastrophic splitting of the Self within the hero-child in relation to the Oresteian Mother, embodied by Morgan la Fey in Arthurian literature, which produces a psychotic state.