Defending Guinevere: Re-reading William Morris’ “The Defence of Guenevere”

• 영문명: Defending Guinevere: Re-reading William Morris’ “The Defence of Guenevere”
• 발행기관: 한국영미어문학회
• 저자명: 김정숙(Jeongsuk Kim)
• 간행물 정보: 『영미어문학』제151호, 123~143쪽, 전체 21쪽
• 주제분류: 어문학 > 영어와문학
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2023.12.31

영문 초록

This essay examines how William Morris strategically defended Guinevere and her affair with Lancelot in his poetry “The Defence of Guenevere” within the cultural landscape of the nineteenth century. Instead of repeating the conventional reading of Queen Guinevere as a model of transgressive women fixed by the dichotomous good versus bad femininity, this essay more focuses on Guinevere’s various guises in order to contexualize Guinevere and her adultery in a broader sense of human nature. First, this essay explores how Morris portrayed a true picture of Guinevere, which was obscured and overshadowed by the dominant gender discourse of the time, by applying his anachronistic and unconventional literary device deviated from conventional social norm and literary style. Although Morris’ radical and unconventional Arthurian world failed to appeal the contemporaries, this essay argues that it was Morris’ subtle and ingenious way that reflected the nineteenth century culture as well as his forward-looking view of a potential shift in the status of women. Considering the fact that it was a critical period in the evolution of modern legal and cultural attitudes to the relation of women and sexuality, Morris was a more realistic observer describing Victorian anxieties about the conservative Victorian sexual discourse in his poetry.

목차

1. Introduction

2. Let Guinevere speak her own story

3. Conclusion

Works Cited

키워드

William Morris Alfred Lord Tennyson “The Defence of Guenevere” Idylls of the King human nature Victorian Gender Ideology