Porous Boundaries Between the Witch Medea and the Fairy Mistress Melusine in Middle English Romance

In this article, I examine John Gower’s use of conventions of popular Middle English romance to retell the Medea and Jason narrative in the Confessio Amantis (c. 1386-90). Gower’s version of Medea is often regarded as unusually sympathetic, as he portrays her as a loving wife and, rather than censoring her magical abilities, he explores her power and craft in more detail than do other late Middle English authors. I argue that Gower’s sympathetic portrayal of Medea in the Confessio is facilitated because he reframes the classical Medea to position her as a very specific type of romance heroine: the fairy mistress or enchantress. Moreover, by comparing Gower’s Medea with the Middle English Melusine—another female figure with a reputation for monstrosity who nevertheless serves as the quintessential type of fairy mistress in romance—I argue that the taxonomical boundaries between the “witch” Medea and “fairy” Melusine are revealed as porous. The shared imagery of water, dragons, serpents and flight exposes the shared taxonomical space between the two characters and thus serves to reinforce the ways in which Gower’s Medea fits the mould of the romance fairy mistress.