Morgana e os pré-rafaelitas: arte e gênero na recepção feiticeira medieval em pinturas do século XIX.

Abstract

Morgan le fay was a striking figure in medieval literature and a crucial character in the Arthurian Cycle narratives, since her first appearance as a benevolent goddess-like being in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Vita Merlini in 1150, until cementing her position as the most famous sorceress in the western cultural imaginary in Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, her diverse versions have inspired an unending number of books, movies and TV series up to the present day. In this research, our goal is to comprehend this character’s reception in 19th century’s british art, our focus being the paintings Morgan le Fay (1864) by Frederick Sandys, and Morgan le Fay (1862) by Edward Burne-Jones, both members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, an artistic group characterized for its strong medievalism and revivalism, founded in 1848 as a reaction to the british academic arts. We analyzed the Brotherhood and its artists’ ideals and their relation with gender issues and its links to elements and concepts of nationalistic, romantic and orientalist themes, wich were very common in 19th century England, and grasping how such elements were manifested in the studied paintings as well as its relation to Morgan’s reception. For the image analysis methodology we used the system proposed by Erwin Panofsky; in addition to it, our research is aligned to the Reception Studies and we also worked with the concepts of Gender and Orientalism.