Murtaugh, Daniel M.

Beowulf scholarship has long regarded the bards within the poem's verses as
representatives of Anglo-Saxon history. Based on this assumption, critics have drawn
conclusions about the Germanic scops of history without considering the possibility that
the minstrels bought to life within the poem would likely have been reconstructions of the
Anglo-Saxons Germanic past. This study approaches Beowulf's oral poets as idealized
poetic devices and examines their effect on the theme of the poem. The Beowulf poet sets
the bard apart from the members of his society by granting him a broader perspective.
When the bard sings, he uses this perspective to address certain characters within the
poem and to determine whether they merited praise or judgment. The Beowulf poet used
these songs to facilitate reflection in the characters for whom the bard sang and to point
these characters toward the proper moral path.

Morgan le Fay and the Lady of the Lake are the two most critical representatives of supernatural female power in Arthurian legend. Yet despite their common origins from a single figure in Celtic myth, these women were split into two distinct characters as the legend was progressively revised. Malory finalizes this split by forcing Morgan and Nymue into direct opposition. The events and characteristics that he did not include from his French sources combined with the actions and descriptions that he invented for the two sorceresses reveal his vision of these women and his intolerance for their contradictory nature. Malory's attitude toward supernatural female power, perhaps the reigning attitude of his time, could only reconcile accommodate this magic if it occurred in a dichotomy: such power must either be good or evil. The archetypes constructed in Malory's Morgan le Fay and his Lady of the Lake persist in popular culture even today.