King Arthur's Enchantresses ─ Morgan and Her Sisters in Arthurian Tradition

King Arthur summons visions of courtly chivalry, towering castles, windswept battlefields, heroic quests, and above all of the monarch who dies but who one day shall return. The Arthurian legend lives on as powerfully and enduringly as ever. Yet central to these stories are the mysterious, sexually alluring enchantresses - spellcasters, mistresses of magic who wield extraordinary influence over Arthur's life and destiny. Carolyne Larrington takes her readers on a quest to discover why these dangerous women continue to bewitch us. She explores them as they appear in poetry and painting, on the Internet and TV, in high and popular culture and shows that whether they be chaste or depraved, necrophiliacs or virgins, they are manifestations of the Other, frightening and fascinating in equal measure.

Carolyne Larrington is Fellow and Tutor in Medieval English at St John's College, Oxford, UK. She is the author and editor of several books, which include Women and Writing in Medieval Literature (1995), The Woman's Companion to Mythology (1997) and The Poetic Edda: Essays on Mythological Poetry (2001). An expert on Arthurian myth, she is a regular contributor to TV and radio, and recently appeared on Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time (Radio 4) to discuss the cultural history of the Holy Grail.