Here (at last) are the details of our upcoming session for Kalamazoo in May. I append author-supplied abstracts below as well, but please note these may have changed drastically by conference time.
Michael Torregrossa
What Is the Magic of Merlin? The Appeal of the Wizard in the
Contemporary World: In Celebration of the Tenth Anniversary of the Virtual
Society for the Study of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages (A Roundtable)
Saturday, May 19 3:30-5:00 PM
Session 484 (Bernhard 204)
Sponsor: The Virtual Society for the Study of Popular
Culture and the Middle Ages
Organizer: Michael A. Torregrossa, The Virtual Society for
the Study of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages
Presider: Mikee Delony, Abilene Christian University
Paper 1: “Merlin as Cultural Signifier”
Perry Neil Harrison, Baylor University
The wizard Merlin is undoubtedly
one of the figures of the Arthurian legend that has most thoroughly permeated
the public consciousness. Appearing in scores of books, films, and television
adaptations, the presence of the magician is an expected aspect during any
telling of Arthur’s story, often accompanied by expectations of a very specific
role within the narrative structure. Likewise, the character of Merlin has
experienced a long tradition of academic scholarship, perhaps most recently in
Stephen Knight’s 2009 monograph Merlin:
Knowledge and Power Through the Ages.
Yet, while Merlin is among the
oldest and most perpetually present figures seen within the Arthurian legend,
the current image of the wizard in contemporary popular culture differs
tremendously from his appearances in the earliest Arthurian texts. The purpose
of this study is to examine the portrayals of Merlin during the earliest
depictions in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s writings, specifically his depiction as a
figure that relies upon alchemy and drugs to bring about change rather than
direct magical spells. Specific attention will be given to these early
depictions of Merlin are indicative of larger cultural views concerning the
malleability of the bodily form. Similarly, some time will also be spent
examining the cultural shifts that are illuminated by the evolution of the
magician’s portrayals in literature and, subsequently, film and television.
Paper 2: “The Hanged Man: Odin as the Original Merlin Wizard”
Chris Fields, Abilene Christian University
Merlin is often held up as the
archetypical wizard character, but in truth he's just the progenitor of the
modern idea of the wizard. Not only can his character be traced into the
present day to figures like Gandalf, but his himself harkens back to the Urtext
of the "old wizard" archetype, the Norse god Odin. For this paper I
will discuss how elements of Odin's character survived the destruction of pagan
Norse religion and culture and eventually found themselves into the modern
wizard, exemplified by Merlin
Paper 3: “The
Trickster Tricked: Transgressive Technologies and Forbidden Knowledge in Merlin
Representations”
Susan Jeffers, Independent Scholar
Susan Jeffers, Independent Scholar
This paper will look at the
transgressive technologies of sharing power in recent adaptations of Merlin. Is
all power or knowledge meant to be shared? What happens when power or knowledge
is given, stolen, or shared? How does this affect the romantic relationships
between, for example, Merlin and Nimue, or possibly Merlin and Arthur? This
paper will consider these questions drawing on the ideas of Luce Irigaray and
Judith Butler for support. It may suggest that contemporary audiences prefer
romances involving individuals of equally matched power, but remain
uncomfortable with threats to traditionally masculine authority.
Paper 4: “Merlin the Underdog: Re-Writing the Past in
Arthurian Film and Television Adaptations”
Heidi Breuer, California State University, San Marcos
Adaptations of the Arthurian legend
have enjoyed a continuous popularity in U.S. film and television throughout the
20th and 21st centuries.
During the two decades surrounding the turn of the 21st
century, visual presentations of the Arthurian legend often utilize a rhetoric
of colonization and oppression to cast the magical figures, especially Merlin
(but less frequently, Morgan le Fay) as heroic underdogs who use magic to help
restore justice to an oppressed group of Celtic natives. Whereas representations like Excalibur (1981) emphasize Merlin’s role
in helping Arthur colonize surrounding lands, many films and television series
from the 1990s and 2000s (including Merlin
1998, The Mists of Avalon 2001, King Arthur 2004, and The Last Legion 2007) reposition Merlin
as a pseudo-Celtic freedom fighter. U.S.
film and television producers and directors, in particular, have utilized the
Arthurian legend in representations that function to erase what bell hooks has
called “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” by imagining an innocent,
white, pre-colonialist past.
Paper 5: “Merlin’s
‘The Eye of the Phoenix’: The Search for Significance in a Desacralized World”
Hannah Gracy, West Virginia University [WITHDRAWN]
The
tale of the Fisher King has been passed on and reinterpreted for centuries,
from traditional Arthurian legends to allusions in contemporary television
shows such as Breaking
Bad. As in the rest
of the Arthurian saga, the magic inherent in the Fisher King's story is one
facet that continues to fascinate literary, artistic, and historical
enthusiasts. While the romanticized chivalry of the knights of Camelot has
inspired countless interpretations and adaptations, the mystery in which the
legends are steeped, particularly that of the Fisher King, owes much to the
blurred lines between the supernatural and the easily explicable.
The
Merlin television series has recently
seized on a new interpretation of the Fisher King in the episode “The Eye of
the Phoenix”, an interpretation in which the wounded king is a sorcerer whose
magic has kept him barely clinging to life through the centuries as his land
turns to rot. In encountering the Fisher King, young Merlin realizes that he
alone possesses the skills necessary to save Camelot in its coming time of
peril. The fact that Merlin must hide his magic both in the Fisher King episode
and throughout the series is a unique take on the Arthurian saga, in which for
the most part magic and Christianity coexist with each other in a world of
clear lines dividing good from evil. This need to hide one’s innate abilities
parallels the increasing desacralization of modern American culture, a desacralization
shown by my paper to suppress the human quest for significance as something
nonexistent and therefore unachievable.
While
the desire for one’s existence to matter is nothing new, Merlin shares the ways in which the
individual’s continued search for significance has evolved in the twenty-first
century. Although science continues to explain away many of the world's
mysteries, this in no way has lessened humanity's search for the unknown or the
unexplainable. Thus, rather than disappearing into the vaults of myth, the
legends of Merlin and other magic-wielders, individuals who make their own
significance, have gained prominence in twenty-first century America. This may
seem incongruous at first with an increasingly forward-looking and secularized
culture, but my paper will demonstrate that the obsession in Merlin with the secret practicing of
magic parallels humanity’s continued, albeit at times embarrassed, search for
significance in a continually desacralized world. This quest is epitomized in
the tale of the Fisher King, a man shown in Merlin to
have outlived the days of magic and mystery but who still desperately desires
his life to have meaning.
Paper 6: “The Case of Merlin as an Illustration of
Postmodernism in the Francophone Graphic Novel”
Clotilde E. Landais, Purdue University
The figure of Merlin, either per se
or under different avatars of the archetypal wizard, is a central figure in
contemporary Fantasy: since the medieval Arthurian legend, Merlin has been
present in many novels and short-stories, but also in other forms of narrative,
such as movies and TV shows, songs, and graphic novels.
In most of these representations,
Merlin or his counterparts are presented as the hero figure from the
proto-legend: in Robert de Boron’s Estoire
de Merlin, the wizard fathered by the devil chooses to do God’s work and
places his great powers at the service of the kingdom of Logres. Across
centuries, the character of Merlin evolves into the archetype of the good
wizard, a mentor figure with infinite powers and infinite knowledge.
However, there are some exceptions
to this representation, and the Francophone graphic novel is a case in point.
Series such as Merlin by Joann Sfar
and José Luis Munuera (Dargaud, 1999-2003) which imagines Merlin’s childhood,
or Kaamelott by Alexandre Astier and
Steven Dupré (Casterman, 2006-) which re-tells the Arthurian legend, present
the wizard’s figure in a different light. Sfar and Astier’s Merlins are indeed
depicted as anti-heroes, but not because they are evil – which could have been
explained by some versions of Merlin’s medieval legend, such as Robert de
Boron’s Prose Lancelot in which the
wizard is said to have never done a good deed in his life. Sfar and Astier’s
representations of Merlin are different because deeply anchored in humor: even
though the wizard characters have the courage and the good will of their
medieval model, they usually lack his powerful skills and extended knowledge
and are characterized instead by clumsiness and foolishness.
Such a parodistic rewriting of a
classic works, with notably the transformation of a hero figure into an
anti-heroic one, is characteristic of the playfulness of postmodernism (see for
instance Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory,
Fiction. NY: Routledge, 2004). This presentation will show that, through
the deconstruction of Merlin’s figure, the Francophone graphic novel anchors
itself in postmodernism and in a self-reflection on the Fantasy genre and its
motifs. The wizard figure is indeed a key motif in Fantasy, and its parody in
the graphic novel – Merlin being the archetype of such a figure – is all the
more significant that it does not occur as often in other media, such as the
novel.
The graphic novel has always served
as a critical tool of the society, especially in Belgium and in France. As the
graphic novel is still considered a popular genre in these cultures which value
intellectual qualities above all, I suggest that this parodistic rewriting of a
figure such as Merlin, which embodies absolute knowledge, reflects a need for
legitimacy. This inclusion of postmodern mechanisms in the Francophone graphic
novel is thus a way to strengthen its literary identity and to assimilate
itself into mainstream literature.
No comments:
Post a Comment