Date of Award
Spring 2023
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
French
First Advisor
Bloch, R. Howard
Abstract
The figure of Merlin conjures the image of the enchanter par excellence. He is a magician and a prophet; he changes shape in the blink of an eye; and he reads and records the omens of the kings of Britain. Thus, Merlin is the locus around which the magical and the marvelous proliferate in Arthurian legend. These marvelous qualities are linked to many sources: a long-standing tradition of popular magic and divination, contemporary Christian beliefs, and even autochthonous Brythonic culture and literature. Yet, these magical events – which have inspired clear disbelief and rejection among skeptical readers both medieval and modern – were sewn into works of historical fiction designed to recapture and romanticize a time when ethnically British kings ruled the British Isles. This dissertation is the first serious effort to explore the numerous intersections between Arthurian romance and magical realism, a generic category that emerged from the Latin American boom of the twentieth century. Though separated by time and space, this body of theory and literature sheds considerable light on what Arthurian literature meant to readers in the past and what it still means to readers now. I examine the works of authors such as Jorge Luis Borges, Amaryll Chanady and William Spindler in order to develop the concept of magical realism as a literary mode, and I explore the post-colonial dimensions of medieval Arthurian romance. This medieval genre emerged in response to the colonization of Brythonic populations. The modern genre of magical realism emerged from the post-colonial context of Latin America. Arthurian romance and Latin American magical realism were both informed by colonial regimes of power, the consequences of decades of foreign domination and the suppression of indigenous peoples and cultures. Furthermore, in both literatures, marvelous elements are inserted into realistic historical contexts. These marvelous elements are frequently linked to either a real or a perceived diversity of cultural paradigms superimposed one upon another. Chapter 1: Eliduc as Metaphysical Magical Realism Laying the framework for my analysis, I identify specific works of medieval literature as magically real using William Spindler’s taxonomy of magical realism. This taxonomy includes: metaphysical magical realism, ontological magical realism, and anthropological magical realism. By reading Marie de France’s Eliduc as metaphysical magical realism, a subgenre that merely intimates the supernatural, I interrogate and radically modify the existing critical understanding of this lay. I demonstrate that Marie de France wished to capitalize on the popular Brittonic kitsch of her time exemplified by the explosion of British- and Breton-themed marvelous literature in the twelfth century. Chapter 2: Bisclavret as Ontological Magical realism Continuing in this same vein, I demonstrate how Marie de France’s lay, Bisclavret, is an example of Spindler’s ontological magical realism. Ontological magical realism incorporates supernatural elements that are not culturally specific into an otherwise realistic narrative. The supernatural dimensions of this text are so generic as to defy any sort of culturally-specific Brittonic identity. Human-animal transformations are so universal that they figure in literature of every generation and from just about every part of the globe. I argue that Marie merely selected a generic supernatural trope in order to feed the popular expectation and appetite for the marvelous twelfth-century Brittonic kitsch I explored in the previous chapter. Chapter 3: Garlan and Balaain as Anthropological Magical RealismPart 1: Death, Honor, and God Examining some specifically Brittonic elements of Arthurian literature, I categorize the Balaain episode from the Post-Vulgate Suite as a manifestation of anthropological magical realism. Anthropological magical realism incorporates culturally-specific forms of the supernatural into otherwise realistic narratives. This culturally specific supernatural is frequently derived from indigenous or oppressed populations. The Post¬-Vulgate Suite is an alternative sequel to the Roman de Merlin distinct from the earlier Vulgate Suite. The story of Balaain’s over-determined death contains three distinct paradigms that, though seemingly at odds with each other, nevertheless reach a single outcome, despite integrating each their own respective chain of causality. In this first part of my analysis, I examine the first two of these paradigms in detail: the social/political paradigm of chivalry and the supernatural paradigm of Christianity. Chapter 4: Garlan and Balaain as Anthropological Magical RealismPart 2: Pagan Identities and Indigenous Paradigms Continuing my analysis of the Balaain episode, I examine the autochthonous and the pagan paradigms which are essential for identifying the Balaain episode as anthropological magical realism. While the so-called Celtic roots of Arthurian romance have been greatly exaggerated in the past, the Balaain episode nevertheless displays important parallels with Welsh romances of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Thus, it has preserved certain autochthonous traditions of Arthur which did not come into French romance via Geoffrey of Monmouth, a prominent early author of Latinate Arthurian material. Furthermore, Arthurian romance itself represents a concerted effort to generate a new British Aeneid or Arthuriad, and it is linked to a world of tutelar roman deities and even potentially to pre-Christian Insular deities through figures such as Merlin. Chapter 5: Prophecy, History, and MythMerlin, Vortigern, and Arthur Arthurian romance bends the genres of history and myth to produce characters and narratives that are neither completely historical nor completely mythical. I make use of three Arthurian figures – Merlin, Vortigern and Arthur himself – to expose natural and magical causalities within the Roman de Merlin and its sequel. These causal modes are best encapsulated in the two key genres that subtend Arthurian literature: chronicle and myth, associated with the natural and the supernatural respectively. Thus, I expand upon the rich paradigmatic diversity that I identified previously in the Balaain episode. Chapter 6: Cause and EffectThe Magic and the Real in the Post-Vulgate Merlin and Suite The authors of medieval Arthurian romance were able to alleviate the inherent antinomy of their narratives and accommodate both natural and supernatural forms of causality within the same text. I make use of Barbara Newman’s concept of the “crossover” to examine the function of the supernatural and its relationship to realistic events in a single text. Despite the apparent antinomy between the natural and the supernatural, the supernatural is frequently invoked to serve as a sort of glue that, instead of undermining the realistic elements of a story, reinforces narrative structure generating cohesion through the same over-determinacy demonstrated above in the Balaain episode. The Matter of Britain and, by extension, Arthurian legend should be understood in the light of the concept of antinomy. Magical realism creates a structure for exploring the operation of diverse paradigms and causalities that generate antinomy within Arthurian romance. I argue that Arthurian romance resolves this antinomy primarily in two ways, either through over-determinacy in which a single outcome has multiple causes or by bending genres and softening the barrier between paradigms, such as the barrier between the genres of myth and history. At times, the cultural specificity of certain “mythical” elements may be suspect, especially those that are derived from a twelfth-century British kitsch or likewise from a twentieth-century Latin kitsch. However, these texts abound with magical elements which can be either invented or which can be borrowed from or inspired by indigenous mythologies. These magical elements are at odds with the realistic elements of the same texts. It is the reconciliation of the magic and the real, the evacuation of antinomy, that makes Arthurian romance magically real.
Recommended Citation
Kestle, Aaron Richard, "Magical Realism in the Middle Ages: The Marvelous Merlin of Arthurian Legend" (2023). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 1034.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/1034
