Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Guinevere and Medieval Queens

From Medievalists.net:
Authors have given Queen Guinevere of the Arthurian stories a wide variety of personalities; she has been varyingly portrayed as seductive, faithful, “fallen,” powerful, powerless, an inheritor of a matriarchal tradition, weak-willed, and strong-willed.1 These personalities span eight centuries and are the products of their respective times and authors much more so than of any historical Guinevere. Despite this, however, threads of similarity run throughout many of the portrayals: she had power in some areas and none in others; she was involved in a courtly romance; and she did not produce an heir to the throne. None of these were unique to her, either; either stereotypes or literary convention demanded them all. I examine Guinevere’s portrayals by three influential medieval writers, Chrétien de Troyes, Marie de France, and Sir Thomas Malory, compare them to historical queens, and show that although their representations of her emphasized different aspects, together they add up to a portrait of a medieval literary queen both stereotypical and human. (Read more.)
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1 comment:

julygirl said...

I believe he word Guine and Queen are historically the same word.