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m. victoria guerin, The Fall of Kings and Princes: Structure and Destruction in
Arthurian Tragedy. Figurae: Reading Medieval Culture. Stanford CA: Stanford UP,
1995. Pp. xi, 336. isbn: 0-8047-2290-0. cloth. $39.50.
‘What good is a story about Arthur that doesn’t include Merlin?’ asked one of my
students as we discussed the recent Arthurian film First Knight. Though the question
surprised me as I thought of all my favorite Chrétien stories, my student’s remark
illustrated to what degree the various stories that make up the legend of Arthur have
been manipulated over the centuries and then solidified into a coherent whole. The
audience of Arthurian material expects a certain plot line and cast of characters in any
story told about Arthur and his court. M. Victoria Guerin’s book likewise insists upon
the presence of the story of Mordred as product of incest between Arthur and his
sister in the very first written representations of Arthurian court. While Mordred does
not actually emerge as the incestuous son of Arthur until the thirteenth-century French
Vulgate Cycle, Guerin examines both the Vulgate cycle and twelfth-century works
that precede the Vulgate Cycle. Her goal is to illustrate how the earlier texts present
characters that foreshadow the Mordred–Arthur conflict.
Mordred’s importance is double in Guerin’s analysis. First of all, he is the tangible
product of the violation of the strict taboo against incest. Incest is an albeit
unintentional sin on Arthur’s part, but it is also the misstep which will eventually
bring down both Arthur and the kingdom. In addition, Mordred denotes treason and
patricide. His rebellion is the ultimate one, betraying father, ruler and country. Guerin
thoughtfully examines the role of Mordred and his importance to the very foundations
of Arthurian legend.
Chapter 1 examines the Mordred story in the thirteenth-century French Vulgate
Cycle. The beginning of the chapter traces the transmission of the Mordred story and
highlights the changes made to his character through the centuries. Mordred is first
portrayed as the treasonous nephew in Wace and Monmouth, only to be ignored by
twelfth-century writers such as Chrétien who focus instead on Arthur’s knights. He
finally reappears in the Vulgate Cycle as the product of incest. Guerin states her goal
in this chapter—she will show that contrary to the chronology of the works, the story
of Mordred’s incestuous birth was present before and in Monmouth, was transmitted
through the heroes of twelfth-century romance and early parts of the Vulgate, becoming
overt in the later stories of the Vulgate.
Guerin also uses her first chapter to develop her picture of Arthur as a tragic hero,
claiming that ‘if the word “tragedy” does not exemplify for these writers what it does
for Aristotle and for us, they were nevertheless no strangers to the underlying concept
of the Aristotelian hero (5).’ Guerin concentrates on Arthur’s tragic flaw. Like Oedipus,
Arthur will unwittingly commit incest, destroying both himself and his kingdom.
Guerin’s research and analysis of the importance of the incest theme to thirteenthcentury writers is detailed and well-developed and will prove invaluable to those seeking
to understand the dominance of the incest theme in medieval texts. The connections
she forges between Arthurian legends and Greek tragedy are less convincing, but they
do provoke important parallels and questions.
a r t h u r i a n a 6 . 2 (1 9 9 6 )
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Chapters 2 through 4 deal with three texts that precede the Vulgate Cycle. These
texts, according to Guerin, contain veiled treatment of the Mordred–Arthur conflict.
Guerin feels that medieval writers could not write about the death of Arthur, for that
would mean the death of their own literary endeavors. As the story of Arthur’s fall and
death are told, the ability to tell more stories ends. With the end of Arthur, the Round
Table can exist no longer. Therefore, the twelfth–century episodic romances are stories
which satisfy the audience’s previous knowledge of the eventual end of Arthur and the
kingdom, but they do so covertly, through symbols and replacement characters, so
that the storytelling can continue. Guerin reads the episodic romances as embodying
the tension created as authors try to meet listeners’ expectations about Arthurian
materials without telling the final chapter which would mark the end of Arthurian
storytelling.
Le Chevalier de la Charrete is the central work studied in the second chapter. Here
Lancelot is read as a Mordred replacement. His affair with Guenevere doubles Mordred’s
eventual attempt to marry the queen. Guerin develops a complex relationship of
doubles—Méléagant as evil double of Lancelot, Lancelot/Méléagant as shadowy figures
of Mordred. This theme is then further explored in the third chapter as Le Conte du
Graal is read with Perceval acting as a vehicle for the Mordred story. Guerin sees the
Perceval/Gauvain dichotomy of Chrétien’s text as an attempt to indicate that Gauvain
was in fact Perceval’s father.The Fisher King of Le Conte du Graal is betrayed by Perceval
just as Bademagu is betrayed by Méléagant and as Arthur will be betrayed by
Mordred.The relationship between Gauvain and Perceval then becomes a double of
Lancelot and Méléagant, all of whom embody the relationship that Mordred has with
Arthur. Reading Perceval as the moral equivalent of Méléagant and Mordred takes
some doing, but Guerin confidently proceeds to do just that. Finally, in her strongest
chapter, Guerin examines Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and shows that despite the
fact that the Gawain–poet is treating the earliest days of Arthur’s youth and glory, the
innocence has already been lost. Readers and authors know about the eventual fall of
Arthur through incest. Thus, Gawain foreshadows the eventual fall of the kingdom.
Gawain becomes Mordred’s double as he comes close to sexual transgression but avoids
betraying his host, Bertilak.
While Guerin makes important and fruitful tracks toward unearthing the
significance of the cryptic genealogical intertwining of Arthurian relationships, she
often resorts to questionable conjecture in order to ‘prove’ her ideas. For instance,
since the Roman de Thèbes and the Lancelot both contain long lessons on kingship,
Guerin surmises that since the Roman de Thèbes also contains the Oedipus story, the
author of the Lancelot must have kept this theme in mind in writing his tale. There are
similarities between the stories, and it might well be argued that the Lancelot author
was a reader of the Roman de Thèbes, but Guerin fails, here and elsewhere, to make
evident the connection between the text she is examining and the text she claims as
source, inspiration, or subtext.
Guerin’s study raises a further unsettling issue. Her desire to find the complete
story of Mordred passed surreptitiously through oral sources to Monmouth and then
down through the centuries effectively denies the power of the author of the thirteenth-
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century Vulgate cycle on his own text. This view perpetuates the perception that
medieval authors were not creators on their own right, but rather transmitters of an
oral tradition formed in a more fertile, creative period. Just as the director of First
Knight did not feel tied to previous sources, so the medieval writer could experiment
and concoct an individual ‘take’ on inherited stories. As much as we may in retrospect
consider Mordred’s incestuous origin as a vital part of our own version of Arthurian
legend, the medieval writer was not constrained by this expectation.
Despite these reservations, Guerin’s study offers useful textual readings combined
with an excellent inquiry into incest as subtext in many Arthurian stories. Her readings
should provoke a great deal of interest and further study.
ly n n r a m e y
Harvard University