Roots of Modern Fantasy

Abstract

Roots of Modern Fantasy Norma Bagnall (bio) Sullivan, C. W. III . Welsh Celtic Myth in Modern Fantasy. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1989. The Mabinogi has provided a rich source of story for twentieth-century fantasists both in Britain and in the United States and consists of Four Branches or four stories. Each Branch tells a story of Welsh royalty and is set in medieval times. The similarity to Arthurian legend is evident, yet the stories are distinctively Welsh in origin and intent. The stories deriving from this source that we in America know best other than the Arthurian stories are Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain. Sullivan has taken on a massive and important job in his discussion of how these tales are translated into modern fantasy, and his work is the most complete treatise on Welsh legend I've seen. He does a thorough job of incorporating early critical attention to Celtic myth, gives a brief history of the Celts, compares several versions of the Mabinogi currently in print, and tells how six contemporary authors have used the material in creating high fantasy. The book begins with a discussion of the Welsh influence on western literature. The Celts, including the Scots, Irish, and Welsh, began to arrive in the British Isles early, perhaps 600 B.C., and the English did not arrive until 1,000 years later. Sullivan suggests that the clashes between the English and the Welsh, and between the English and the Irish, had their beginnings at this time because of the feeling of superiority the English had over the peoples they conquered. However, he maintains, the Celts also had an influence on Arthurian literature and thus an influence on British and American culture. This influence continues though such disparate writers as Shakespeare, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Walt Whitman. Sullivan considers the Welsh influence on Old English, Irish, and Scandinavian literatures, on the Arthurian tradition, and particularly on twentieth-century British and American literature. He uses sound literary critical sources to establish this basis, and he states that high fantasy, which owes much of its refinement and complexity to medieval Arthurian romances, has as its earlier beginnings Celtic literature on which Arthurian romance is based. Sullivan divides his discussion of twentieth-century writers' use of the Mabinogi into three groups; one group expands the original source material, one interweaves Welsh legend with their own created legend, and one invents. Evangeline Walton has written four books based on the Mabinogi and set in medieval times; Sullivan focuses on The Island of the Mighty to discuss with Alan Garner's The Owl Service, which is set in the twentieth century. Both take original source material from the Fourth Branch, "Math, Son of Mathonwy," and expand it. Walton's The Island of the Mighty (1970) is a reissue of her earlier The Virgin and the Swine (1936), and is, according to Sullivan, more fully realized than her other three novels which were not written until the 1970s. Walton has altered little of the original legend to tell her own story, but she has added a great deal. The Fourth Branch covers some twenty pages in the Jones and Jones translation; Walton's story is almost 400 pages long. What she has done is to omit the Christian references contained in the Jones and Jones translation of the Mabinogi (1949) and to insert instead reference to Druids which she felt was more in keeping with the tales which had pre-Christian origin. Sullivan makes a good case for Walton's creating memorable character and place out of basic Celtic material which, in the manner of legend, deliberately lacked both. Garner expands his story, The Owl Service (1967), from that part of the Fourth Branch which deals with Blodeuedd, the woman created from flowers by Gwydion as bride for Lleu, and the tragic triangle created when she falls in love with another man. It is a complicated story in the Mabinogi, and Garner confuses his readers because he does not give them any mythic framework with which to compare the twentienth century re-telling. Sullivan is on target with his criticism of Garner; readers with a good knowledge of the...