From Legend to Life: Julia Margaret Cameron’s Illustrations

to

Malory’s “Morte Darthur”

DR. DAVID LUTHER

The Parting of Lancelot and Guinevere

• Medievalism and Romanticism

• Victorian attitudes towards Guinevere

• Themes: temptation, forgiviness, and redemption

• Rossetti’s Oxford Union Mural of 1857

• “Guinevere,” lines 86-91• Restraint of gesture—

Guinevere’s silent sorrow

William Morris’ Queen Guinevere 1858

• Morris’ only extant oil painting

• Tristram and Isolde: the tragic face of courtly love

• Mathew Arnold’s 1852 study, Wagner’s opera, Swinburne’s verse drama, Tennyson’s “Idylls”

• Victorian representations of femininity

• Painting’s medievalism

• Painting’s allusions to love affair with Lancelot

• Irony: parody of the Arthurian love triangle

Queen Guinevere by William Morris 1858

Frank Cowper’s Four Queens Find Lancelot Sleeping

Malroy’s Nimue and Merlin 1874

• Vivien as the “femme fatale”: Victorian degenerate woman

• “The wiliest and the worst,” line 29• Based on Malory’s Nimue, whose

beauty caught Merlin’s eye• Tennyson’s telling: Vivien’s pursuit• Compared to Burne Jones The

Beguiling of Merlin• Vivien as the incarnation of the

serpent in Eden: Arthur’s fall• She “writhed toward him,” line 237• Her “arm clung like a snake,” line 240• Analogy of snake in Gustave Dore’s

engraving to “Idylls”

Nimue and Merlin continued

• Cameron submerged serpentine sensuality

• Casting of the spell and submission

• Absence of sexual tension• Victorian decorum restricted

models actions• Length of time required for

exposures• Model selection: W M Rossetti:

“truth” and “scrupulous fidelity”

Elenor Brickdale’s Merlin

Then, in one moment, she put forth the charmOf woven paces and of waving hands,And in the hollow oak he lay as dead, And lost to life and use and name and fame

The

Beguiling

of

Merlin

Burne Jones’ The Beguiling of Merlin 1874

A storm was coming, but the winds were still

And in the wild woods of BroceliandeBefore an oak, so hollow, huge and

old...At Merlin's feet the wily Vivien lay

...lissome-limbed, she

Writhed towards him, slided up his knee and sat,

Behind his ankle twined her hollow feetTogether, curved an arm about his

neck,Clung like a snake.

Burne-Jones’ Merlin and Nimue 1861

Cameron’s Standing WomanBurne-Jones’ Flamma Vestalis

Elaine 1874

"Then rose the dumb old servitor, and the dead, oar'd by the dumb went upward with the flood"

King Arthur Lying in the Barge

Burne-Jones’ Last Sleep of Arthur in Avalon 1898