In this tale of Arthur the women do shine

Abstract

This paper aims at analyzing the role of some Arthurian feminine characters incontemporary Arthurian literature. Whilst their medieval counterparts had a mainly passive role andthey did seldom take part in the action of the text, current Arthurian literature has turned this ideaupside down. The first hints at this change could be observed in a few Victorian poems, but it hasbeen in thetwentieth and twenty-first centuries that this trend has shown more popular, not only intexts written by women, as the popularThe Mists of Avalonby Marion Zimmer Bradley, but also inthose written by male authors, as it is the case of Bernard Cornwell’strilogy “The WarlordChronicles”, on which this papers focuses. The study deals with the four most important femininecharacters of the trilogy and how they interact in the political and religious upheavals of the time.