Sir Gawain And The Green Knight – 13 – Morgan Le Fay – Original Screenprint

Artist: Clive Hicks-Jenkins
Price: £295.00
Publisher: The Artist & The Penfold Press, UK
Format: Original screenprint
Condition: Fine condition, unframed
Size: 55.5cm x 55.5cm
Edition Number: 7/75

Description

Size: 55.5cm x 55.5cm. Number 7 from the edition of 75, signed by the artist. The thirteenth in the series that Clive Hicks-Jenkins based on Simon Armitage’s retelling of the anonymous 14th Century folk tale. New. PRICE INCLUDES FREE ROYAL MAIL SPECIAL DELIVERY POSTAGE IN THE UK.

Morgan Le Fay: A Brief Biography

Morgan le Fay is a central female figure in the Arthurian tradition, variously portrayed as healer, enchantress, antagonist, protector, and liminal guardian of the Otherworld. Her character evolves significantly across centuries of literature, reflecting changing attitudes to power, magic, gender, and morality. Far from being a single, fixed persona, Morgan is best understood as a composite figure, shaped by Celtic mythology, medieval romance, and later reinterpretation.

1. Origins and Early Traditions

Celtic and Mythological Roots

Morgan le Fay’s origins lie partly in Celtic myth, particularly in traditions surrounding:

• The Otherworld (Avalon, Annwn, Tir na nÓg)
• Female supernatural beings associated with water, healing, and fate

Her name is usually connected to mór (great) or mori (sea), reinforcing associations with water, liminality, and transition.

Early Literary Appearance

Morgan first appears in Latin literature in the 12th century, notably in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Vita Merlini, where she is:

• One of several magical sisters
• A ruler or inhabitant of Avalon
• Skilled in healing, shape-shifting, and prophecy

At this stage, she is not evil, nor opposed to Arthur.

2. Morgan le Fay in Medieval Romance

Family Relationships

In later medieval romances, particularly French and English traditions, Morgan is established as:

• Arthur’s half-sister, daughter of Igraine and Gorlois
• Sister to Morgause and Elaine of Garlot
• Often educated in magic, sometimes by Merlin or in a convent

These familial ties deepen the emotional and political stakes of her actions.

3. Roles and Functions

Morgan’s power lies in her ambiguity. She operates in multiple, sometimes contradictory roles:

1. Enchantress and Sorceress

Morgan is one of the most powerful magical figures in Arthurian legend:

• Skilled in illusion, enchantment, and transformation
• Able to control or influence nature
• Often rivals Merlin in magical knowledge

Her magic is intellectual and learned, not merely innate.

1. Healer and Guardian of Avalon

In several traditions, Morgan:

• Heals Arthur after the Battle of Camlann
• Escorts him to Avalon
• Acts as a custodian of liminal space between life and death

This role aligns her with ancient goddess-like figures, rather than villains.

1. Adversary of the Arthurian Court

In later romances, particularly those influenced by Christian moral frameworks, Morgan becomes:

• A critic of Arthur’s kingship
• An opponent of Guinevere
• A tester or saboteur of knights, especially Lancelot and Gawain

Her hostility often stems from:

• Resentment of patriarchal authority
• Personal grievances
• Moral scepticism about chivalric ideals

4. Morgan le Fay and Sir Gawain

Morgan plays a crucial role in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight:

• She is revealed as the hidden architect of the Green Knight’s challenge
• Her aim is to test the moral integrity of Arthur’s court
• She seeks to expose human frailty beneath chivalric perfection

Importantly, Morgan does not seek destruction but revelation. Her actions reveal ethical truth rather than simply causing harm.

5. Moral Ambiguity and Gender

A Threatening Woman

In medieval Christian contexts, Morgan increasingly embodies anxieties about:

• Female autonomy
• Intellectual power outside male control
• Non-clerical knowledge

As a result, she is often framed as:

• Seductive
• Deceptive
• Dangerous

A Figure of Resistance

Modern scholarship increasingly reads Morgan as:

• A challenger of rigid moral systems
• A voice of scepticism in an idealised court
• A representative of older, pre-Christian traditions

Her refusal to submit to Arthur’s authority can be interpreted as political and cultural resistance, not villainy.

6. Later Medieval and Early Modern Depictions

In works such as:

• The Vulgate Cycle
• Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur

Morgan is more consistently antagonistic:

• She plots against Arthur
• Attempts to expose Guinevere and Lancelot
• Uses magic to entrap or humiliate knights

Yet even in Malory, she remains complex:

• She aids Arthur at his death
• She retains her connection to Avalon
• She is never entirely destroyed or defeated

7. Modern Interpretations

Literature and Scholarship

Modern retellings frequently rehabilitate Morgan:

• As a tragic or misunderstood figure
• As a feminist reinterpretation of medieval myth
• As a morally superior critic of chivalric hypocrisy

Popular Culture

In contemporary novels, films, and television, Morgan is often:

• A morally grey anti-hero
• A rival ruler or sorceress with her own ethical code
• A symbol of alternative power structures

These portrayals draw on her earliest mythic roots rather than her later demonisation.

8. Symbolic Significance

Morgan le Fay symbolises:

• Liminality (between worlds, moral systems, life and death)
• Knowledge outside institutions
• The tension between order and wildness
• Female power in male-dominated narratives

She is not the opposite of Arthur so much as his shadow: revealing what his court excludes or suppresses.

Conclusion

Morgan le Fay is one of the most intellectually rich characters in Arthurian legend. Across centuries, she shifts from healer to sorceress, from guardian to adversary, from goddess-like figure to moral antagonist. Her enduring power lies in her refusal to be simplified. She embodies ambiguity, challenges authority, and exposes the fragile ideals of chivalry and kingship.

Rather than a villain, Morgan le Fay is best understood as a necessary counterforce within the Arthurian world — a figure who tests truth, reveals hypocrisy, and guards the threshold between myth and morality.

Simon Armitage’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Short Overview

Simon Armitage’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a modern verse translation of the late fourteenth-century Middle English romance, first published in 2007. Armitage, a contemporary British poet with a strong command of formal verse, sought to produce a version that is faithful to the original poem’s structure, energy, and moral complexity, while remaining readable and compelling for a modern audience.

The result is one of the most widely taught and read modern translations of the poem, valued both academically and creatively.

1. The Original Poem: Context and Importance

Authorship and Date

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was written in the late fourteenth century by an anonymous poet, often referred to as the Gawain Poet or Pearl Poet. The same manuscript contains Pearl, Patience, and Cleanness.

Literary Significance

The poem is a cornerstone of Middle English literature and Arthurian romance. It is notable for:

• Its sophisticated moral psychology
• Its fusion of chivalric romance with Christian ethics
• Its distinctive poetic form

The original poem is written in alliterative verse, punctuated by a recurring bob-and-wheel stanza form.

2. Simon Armitage’s Aims as Translator

Armitage approaches the poem as both a scholar and a practising poet. His stated priorities include:

• Preserving the sound and momentum of the original
• Retaining the alliterative drive rather than producing a prose paraphrase
• Creating a poem that works as poetry in modern English

He avoids archaism for its own sake, but also resists flattening the poem into contemporary idiom. His translation occupies a deliberate middle ground: modern, but not casual.

3. Form and Style in Armitage’s Translation

Alliteration

Armitage preserves alliteration throughout, which is central to the poem’s rhythm and identity. While the exact Middle English patterns are not always replicable, he recreates:

• Stress-based line structures
• Strong consonantal repetition
• Forward-driving musicality

This gives the translation a sense of oral performance, echoing the poem’s medieval roots.

Bob and Wheel

The bob-and-wheel — a short line followed by four rhymed lines — is retained. Armitage uses it to:

• Shift tone
• Underscore irony or moral judgement
• Provide narrative punctuation

His bob-and-wheel stanzas are often sharp, witty, or morally pointed.

Language Register

The language is:

• Clear and muscular
• Occasionally colloquial but never slang-heavy
• Capable of lyric beauty and blunt realism

This balance allows modern readers to engage with the poem’s emotional and ethical tensions without losing its medieval texture.

4. Narrative Overview (as Rendered by Armitage)

The Beheading Game

The poem opens at King Arthur’s Christmas court, interrupted by the arrival of the Green Knight, an enormous, supernatural figure who challenges any knight to strike him once, on the condition that he may return the blow in a year and a day.

Gawain accepts the challenge and beheads the Green Knight, who calmly retrieves his head and reminds Gawain to meet him at the Green Chapel.

Gawain’s Journey

A year later, Gawain sets out alone. Armitage emphasises:

• The bleakness of the winter landscape
• The psychological isolation of the quest
• Gawain’s courage mixed with fear

The Castle of Bertilak

Gawain stays at a castle ruled by Bertilak, whose wife attempts to seduce him while Bertilak hunts each day. Gawain agrees to exchange whatever he gains during the day with his host.

Gawain accepts kisses from the lady (which he duly exchanges), but secretly keeps a green girdle she claims will protect him from death.

The Green Chapel

At the Green Chapel, the Green Knight spares Gawain’s life, nicking his neck only slightly. He reveals himself to be Bertilak, transformed by magic.

Gawain’s failure lies not in lust, but in concealment and self-preservation. His moral lapse is subtle, human, and deeply instructive.

5. Key Themes in Armitage’s Translation

Honour and Human Frailty

Armitage highlights the poem’s central paradox: Gawain is virtuous, but not perfect. His fear of death leads him to compromise absolute honesty.

The translation foregrounds:

• Shame
• Self-knowledge
• Moral ambiguity

Gawain’s failure is not catastrophic, but formative.

Appearance vs Reality

The Green Knight embodies contradiction: terrifying yet playful, threatening yet forgiving. Armitage’s language sustains this tension, avoiding simplistic moral binaries.

The Limits of Chivalry

The poem questions the chivalric ideal by testing it under real pressure. Armitage’s version makes clear that:

• Chivalry is admirable but insufficient
• True virtue requires humility

Nature and the Supernatural

Armitage gives particular attention to:

• Seasonal cycles
• The wildness of the Green Knight
• The contrast between courtly order and natural chaos

Nature is not merely backdrop, but an active moral force.

6. Tone and Interpretation

Armitage’s translation captures the poem’s tonal complexity:

• Comedy sits alongside menace
• Courtly elegance coexists with violence
• Moral seriousness is tempered by irony

The Green Knight’s final judgement is firm but compassionate, reinforcing the poem’s ethical maturity.

7. Reception and Critical Standing

Armitage’s translation is widely regarded as:

• One of the most successful modern verse translations of the poem
• Especially effective for teaching and performance
• Faithful in spirit rather than literalism

Its authority comes from Armitage’s dual expertise as:

• A poet skilled in form and sound
• A careful reader of medieval literature

The translation is often compared favourably with versions by Tolkien, Marie Borroff, and Bernard O’Donoghue, distinguished by its balance of vigour and clarity.

8. Significance for Modern Readers

Armitage’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight speaks directly to contemporary concerns:

• Ethical compromise
• The pressure to appear flawless
• The tension between public reputation and private fear

By preserving the poem’s formal discipline while making it emotionally immediate, Armitage demonstrates why this medieval romance remains profoundly relevant.

Conclusion

Simon Armitage’s translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a major modern reimagining of a medieval masterpiece. It retains the original poem’s formal complexity, moral subtlety, and narrative power, while presenting it in language that is accessible without being reductive. Above all, it preserves the poem’s central insight: that true honour lies not in perfection, but in honest self-recognition.

Clive Hicks-Jenkins: A Short Biography

Introduction

Clive Hicks-Jenkins is widely regarded as one of the most distinctive visual artists working in Britain today. His oeuvre spans painting, drawing, printmaking, collage, artists’ books, and design for performance. What sets him apart is the cohesive imaginative world he has constructed over several decades: a visual language grounded in myth, folklore, biblical narrative, and the psychological landscapes of the human condition. His work is both contemporary and timeless, combining a modernist sensibility with the narrative clarity of medieval and early Renaissance art.

Hicks-Jenkins’ reputation has grown steadily, earning the respect of curators, critics, and fellow artists alike. His handling of form, staging, and character owes much to his first career in theatre and choreography, yet his mature visual art possesses a contemplative emotional resonance that is entirely his own.

Early Life and Background

Born in Newport, South Wales, in 1951, Clive Hicks-Jenkins grew up in a post-war environment marked by close-knit communities and a strong local culture of storytelling. Welsh landscape, language, and folklore would later become central to his work.

Although he showed artistic promise early on, his path into the arts did not begin with visual art. Instead, he gravitated towards theatre and dance—fields that would profoundly shape his later visual vocabulary. His sensitivity to gesture, staging, costume, and expressive movement all stem from this formative period.

Career in Theatre and Dance

Before devoting himself to visual art, Hicks-Jenkins had a distinguished career as a performer, choreographer, and director. He trained in dance and mime, later creating and directing productions for stage and television.

Key elements from his performance background that carried into his later artwork include:

• A choreographic understanding of bodies in space
• A theatre director’s grasp of narrative structure
• A designer’s sense of stylisation, colour, and mood
• The physicality of movement, gesture, and tableau

This grounding in performance gave his eventual paintings and drawings an unusual clarity of staging. Figures appear poised in theatrical tension, animals seem imbued with personality, and even his landscapes feel like constructed spaces in which stories unfold.

Transition to Visual Art

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Hicks-Jenkins turned increasingly towards two-dimensional art, developing a practice that would become his life’s principal focus. He worked initially in drawing and painting, though collage and printmaking later became major components of his practice.

By the mid-1990s he had established himself as a significant presence within Welsh and British art, with major exhibitions and acquisitions confirming his growing prominence. What emerged was a signature style characterised by:

• flattened yet dynamic pictorial space
• layered pattern and bold colour
• stylised figures, animals, and architectural elements
• a sense of narrative tension and interior psychology

His work often feels like an illuminated manuscript reimagined for the present day.

Themes and Artistic Concerns

1. Myth and Folklore

Hicks-Jenkins frequently draws on folklore, medieval romance, and storytelling traditions. His acclaimed “Green Knight” series, inspired by Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, is a notable example—combining medieval narrative with contemporary graphic invention.

2. Biblical and Moral Narratives

Works such as his explorations of the story of Saint Kevin and other hagiographic subjects reveal his interest in moral complexity, temptation, sacrifice, and transformation.

3. Animals and Anthropomorphic Creatures

Animals occupy a central place in his visual world. Horses, dogs, cats, birds, and hybrid beings appear frequently, often functioning as emotional or symbolic counterparts to human protagonists.

4. The Landscapes of Wales

Welsh topography, architecture, and folk traditions permeate his imagery. Hills, chapels, farms, and woods become stage-sets for psychological drama.

5. The Interior Self

While narrative is essential, Hicks-Jenkins’ work is deeply introspective. Many images operate as allegories for anxiety, compassion, courage, and vulnerability.

Techniques and Materials

Hicks-Jenkins is known for his versatility and technical mastery. His methods include:

Painting

Often using acrylics, gouache, and mixed media, he works in layers that give his compositions a luminous, graphic quality.

Collage

His collages—meticulously cut, assembled, and coloured—are among his most celebrated achievements. They have a sculptural presence, combining sharp edges with fluid storytelling.

Drawing

Drawing remains central to his practice, both preparatory and autonomous. His linework is expressive and economical.

Printmaking

He has collaborated with several notable printmakers and studios, producing linocuts, screenprints, and editions that extend the reach of his imagery.

Artists’ Books

Hicks-Jenkins has contributed to award-winning artists’ books, bringing together poetry, narrative, and visual composition. His collaborations with poets such as Derek Walcott, Marly Youmans, and Damian Walford Davies have been especially acclaimed.

Notable Collaborations and Publications

Hicks-Jenkins is highly regarded for his artistic collaborations. These include:

• The Penfold Press, which produced many of his print editions.
• Fine press publishers, with whom he has developed artists’ books rich in imagery and literary nuance.
• Poets and authors, whose texts often inspire or complement his visual cycles.

These collaborative projects are important to his practice: they reveal his commitment to interdisciplinary work and his belief in storytelling as a shared artistic endeavour.

Exhibitions and Recognition

Hicks-Jenkins has exhibited widely in the UK, and his work is represented in major public and private collections. Over the last two decades he has had several substantial solo exhibitions, including retrospectives that trace the evolution of his visual language from theatre to mixed-media masterworks.

Public recognition includes awards for both his visual art and book illustration projects. His influence extends across disciplines: painters, illustrators, printmakers, and set designers all cite him as a source of inspiration.

Personal Qualities and Working Practice

Colleagues and collaborators frequently remark on:

• his generosity of spirit
• his meticulous craftsmanship
• his deep respect for tradition alongside modern experimentation
• his ability to guide younger artists through mentorship and example

He maintains a strong connection to Wales, where he lives and works, drawing on its cultural and geographical richness.

Legacy and Continuing Contribution

Clive Hicks-Jenkins has established a body of work that is distinctive, emotionally resonant, and culturally rooted. His legacy rests on:

• a uniquely recognisable visual language
• the reinvigoration of narrative art in Britain
• significant contributions to artists’ books and contemporary printmaking
• a continued commitment to collaboration, mentorship, and cultural engagement

His work occupies a place at the intersection of folklore, fine art, theatre, and literature. Few contemporary artists have developed such a coherent personal mythology or approached storytelling with such depth, elegance, and humanity.

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