Sunday, November 27, 2011

Welsh Mythology and Folklore in Popular Culture

Welsh Mythology and Folklore in Popular Culture: Essays on Adaptations in Literature, Film, Television and Digital Media

Edited by Audrey L. Becker and Kristin Noone 
Series Editors Donald E. Palumbo and C.W. Sullivan III

Print ISBN: 978-0-7864-6170-7
EBook ISBN: 978-0-7864-8725-7
notes, bibliographies, index
234pp. softcover (6 x 9) 2011
Price: $35.00

About the Book
Examining how we interpret Welshness today, this volume brings together fourteen essays covering a full range of representations of Welsh mythology, folklore, and ritual in popular culture. Topics covered include the twentieth-century fantasy fiction of Evangeline Walton, the Welsh presence in the films of Walt Disney, Welshness in folk music, video games, and postmodern literature. Together, these interdisciplinary essays explore the ways that Welsh motifs have proliferated in this age of cultural cross-pollination, spreading worldwide the myths of one small British nation.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: Re-Imagining Wales
AUDREY L. BECKER and KRISTIN NOONE 1
Celtic Studies and Modern Fantasy Literature
C.W. SULLIVAN III 9
“The Rough, Savage Strength of Earth”: Evangeline Walton’s Human Heroes and Mythic Spaces
KRISTIN NOONE 18
Branwen’s Shame: Voicing the Silent Feminine in Evangeline Walton’s The Children of Llyr
NICOLE A. THOMAS 30
Disavowing Maternity in Evangeline Walton’s The Virgin and the Swine: Fantasy Meets the Social Protest Fiction of the 1930s
DEBORAH HOOKER 42
“An Age-Old Memory”: Arthur Machen’s Celtic Redaction of the Welsh Revival in The Great Return
GEOFFREY REITER 61
Magical Goods, “Orphaned” Exchanges, Punishment and Power in the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi
SUSANA BROWER 81
The Hand at the Window: Twm Siôn Cati, the Welsh Colonial Trickster
JONATHAN EVANS and STEPHEN KNIGHT 91
An Irregular Union: Exploring the Welsh Connection to a Popular African-American Wedding Ritual
TYLER D. PARRY 108
Constructing Myth in Music: Heather Dale, King Arthur and “Culhwch and Olwen”
MEGAN MACALYSTRE 130
Torchwood’s “Spooky-Do’s”: A Popular Culture Perspective on Celtic Mythology
LYNNETTE R. PORTER 140
Everyday Magic: Howl’s Moving Castle and Fantasy as Sociopolitical Commentary
CAROLYNN E. WILCOX 160
Loosely Based: The Problems of Adaptation in Disney’s The Black Cauldron
JEFF HICKS 171
We’re Not in Cymru Anymore: What’s Really Happening in the Online Mabinogi
CLAY KINCHEN SMITH 182
Temporality, Teleology and the Mabinogi in the Twenty-First Century
AUDREY L. BECKER 195

Further Reading 213
About the Contributors 219
Index 221


About the Author
Audrey L. Becker is an assistant professor of English literature at Marygrove College in Detroit, Michigan. She writes on the intersection between Renaissance literature and cultural studies.  
Kristin Noone is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Riverside; her dissertation links medieval romance, fantasy fiction, and popular culture studies. She publishes academic articles on fantasy and medievalism as well as short fantasy fiction.
Donald E. Palumbo is a professor of English at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. He lives in Greenville.
C.W. Sullivan III is Distinguished Professor of arts and sciences at East Carolina University and a full member of the Welsh Academy. He is the author of numerous books and the on-line journal Celtic Cultural Studies

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