Unveiling Women’s Trauma in Arthurian Conception Narratives: A Comparative Analysis of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Wace, and Laȝamon

The accounts of King Arthur assume a central role for the first time in the Historia Regum Britanniaeby Geoffrey of Monmouth (c. 1136), which was first translated into French octosyllabic verse by Wace in his Roman de Brut(c. 1155), and subsequently into semi-alliterative verse by the English poet Laȝamon (c. 1205). In these narratives, two of the primary male figures –namely Arthur and Merlin –are depicted as the result of non-consensual unions. Merlin is described as the offspring of an incubus who visits a sometimes-unconscious girl, whereas Arthur is conceived as the result of a plan devised by Merlin and Uther to deceive Igraine, wife of one of the king’s vassals. Both women disappear from the narrative after the birth of their children and both births are imbued with the trappings of magic and romantic tropes, which serve to obscure the absence of explicit consent. The aim of this paper is to undertake a comparative reading of the two episodes across Geoffrey’s, Wace’s and Laȝamon’s narratives, in order to uncover the strategies adopted to soften the discomfort with the depiction of events imbued with moral ambiguities.