Elements Of Myth Research Articles

W. P. Kinsella’s Butterfly Winter: Towards Gothic Baseball Fiction

W. P. Kinsella’s Butterfly WinterTowards Gothic Baseball Fiction Chifen Lu (bio) This essay aims to point out the so far ignored Gothic elements in the Canadian writer W. P. Kinsella’s novel Butterfly Winter. Long acclaimed as the most representative magical realist baseball fiction writer, Kinsella nevertheless infuses distinct Gothic characters, settings and themes into this last baseball work. The protagonists—the twin baseball players Julio and Esteban Pimental—partake in the enchanting literary tradition of the Romantic Gothic doubles, which have been recurrent in fiction at least since the eighteenth-century. The Hall of Baseball Immortals, a fictive Caribbean version of the Baseball Hall of Fame, alongside its adjoined “wound factory,” distorts the revered pantheon of baseball gods to a Gothic haunted house, locked attic, freak show tent or torture room. While Dr. Noir, the great dictator who is also a medically-trained torturer, assumes a role comparable to the sadist Bluebeard, Quita Garza reminds us of the typical Gothic heroine who is often punished for her excessive curiosity, dangerous desire for forbidden knowledge and her transgression across the tabooed boundaries delineated by the patriarchal order. These Gothic elements, among others, derail Butterfly Winter from the generic conventions of sports fiction, making it eccentric, intriguing and worth further investigation. What’s more, as the last part of the article will elaborate, the Gothic aspect of Butterfly Winter is rendered rather complex and ambivalent by an opposing textual movement towards mythification in the later part of the story. The fundamental contradiction between the Gothic and the mythic makes this work rather problematic. This article demonstrates how the two distinct sets of aesthetics and ideologies co-operate to communicate Kinsella’s peculiar view of baseball or “play” in a broad sense. Different from Kinsella’s favorite physical setting of most of his previous baseball stories—rural American locales—Butterfly Winter is set in central America, more exactly in a nonexistent imaginary country, Courteguay, self-claimed [End Page 83] to be located between Haiti and Dominican Republic. In this tiny Caribbean island country, the air is permeated with tropical exoticism and vivacious whimsies. The military dictator, Dr. Lucius Noir, after a bloody overthrow, seized the political power and began to drive the Western forces away, putting Christian priests to exile, then cloaking the nation in pre-modern superstitions and wizardry. The first half of the novel is hence profuse in occult practices such as curses and shape-shifting magic. It is in such thick fantastic air that magic happens on the daily basis, doing all kinds of tricks to the characters of the story. The paired heroes, the Pimental twins, are born in a supernatural manner, likening them to many demigods in ancient myths. Being born in full baseball outfits and with miniature baseball equipment, their subsequent lives are filled with more magical occurrences, both in the sportive careers and in their involvement in political turmoil. One of the novel’s remarkable traits is its intricate interweaving of sports and politics. Pitching themselves to the international baseball stardom, the Pimental brothers also concern themselves closely with the Courteguayan politics. Their magical athletic careers are contrastingly interwoven with political realism, as Harriet Zaidman notes: “Although the story is full of humor, satire and irony, it also mirrors the history of Central America and the succession of tinpot dictators the US helped install there for 100 years. The political sickness that plagued Central America infests the paradise of Courteguay, too, with similar violent, cruel results at the hands of a former chiropractor.”1 Attempting to explore the Gothic elements in Kinsella’s work, I am nevertheless very aware that this approach has been rarely adopted in previous criticisms. 2 So far the most commonplace critical approach to Kinsella’s work has been identifying the religious and mythical motifs in his baseball narratives. Allen E. Hye dedicates one entire chapter to Shoeless Joe in The Great God Baseball (2004), which is tellingly subtitled Religion in Modern Baseball Fiction. The approach remains prominent in recent research; for example, Brian Aitken directs the reader’s attention to “the mythical element” in Kinsella’s work that “conveys his religious vision and offers some insight into how...

Wicked Female Characters in Roddy Doyle's "The Pram": Revisiting Celtic and Polish Myths in the Context of Twenty-First Century Ireland

“The Pram” is the only horror story in Roddy Doyle’s collection The Deportees and Other Stories (2007). It is also unique in terms of its approach to Ireland’s multicultural scene in the twenty-first century. Doyle turns the other side of the coin and introduces a migrant caretaker (Alina), who loses her mind due to her employees’ (the O’Reilly family) ill-treatment. As a reaction to their scornful attitude, Alina becomes a murderer. Set in the context of twenty-first century Dublin, “The Pram” contains various references to Celtic and Polish mythological female figures (in particular, the Old Hag of Beara and Boginka), which strengthen the thrilling, mythical elements in the plot. This paper aims to examine the characters’ negative attitude towards migrants in Ireland in the light of the racist discourse present in the story. Also, I will focus on the story’s female characters and discuss the handicaps of being a female migrant in Ireland. The parallels between the mythical female figures and the protagonist Alina will be another point to be analyzed. The argument of this paper is that Doyle does not always portray the positive outcomes of a multicultural society. On the contrary, he conveys the perspective of the incoming migrant. “The Pram” stages the obstacles that a female outsider may experience in Ireland and her subsequent transformation as a result of the racism she encounters there.

„Pleinair erfunden …” adalékok Csontváry plein air-tanulmányaihoz (1897–1903)

There is still much to be explored about the exact circumstances of the creation of Csontváry’s pictures and the painter’s working method. Research has either approached the oeuvre from the life path wrought with mythical elements, or wished to embed it in the context of 19th century painting tradition. From these angles, however, the consistently built visual logic of Csontváry’s pictures, their details governed by the inherent laws of the genre of painting are often overlooked. The most adequate method of exploring Csontváry’s creative practice appears to be a thorough examination of the relation between the inspiring sight and the picture painted of it. I based this study on Csontváry’s landscapes painted between 1897 and 1905, first of all those painted in Trogir, Castellammare and Taormina. In the knowledge of these localities it can be established that the painter accurately followed the topographic sight and the conditions of light. At the same time, the comparison of the location and the painting has also revealed that the painter had pairs of pictures in mind in his intention to capture a sight systematically. Taking up a vantage point mostly in northsouth and one in east-west orientation, he created “panorama pictures” built of several elements. His paintings are similar to the 360° panoramas in photography. But while a rotating camera can take an infinite number of photos, the painter assembled the picture from two “shots”. Conspicuously, the pairs of pictures depict different times of day: instead of momentary impressions and moods, Csontváry captured the path of the transmission of light and thereby the passing of time, an interval of time in the pairs of pictures. In his later compositions he was to apply these different light conditions in a single picture, framing as it were the daily path of the planet on the horizon. This practice is related to one of Csontváry’s key technical terms, the “Sun Path”. By capturing the changing of light in one picture Csontváry wished to “perfect” the 19th century plein air technique. His “Sun Path” painting derives from a specific view of nature and the world, which was in polar opposition to the positivism of naturalism and the sensualism of impressionism. Proof of it is the pairs of pictures. They summarize all Csontváry’s observations of time and space, and their translation into the practice of painting. The views conveyed by Csontváry’s paintings were often borrowed from contemporaneous picture postcards. Not only greeting cards but e.g. the rich moving picture and photo material of the programs of the Urania Hungarian Scientific Theatre inspired him. He treated the pictorial themes as visual tropes or conventions, but in the creative process he only used their fixed, symbolic form such as a typical cutting. When a theme was actually to be realized, he thought it indispensable to be on the site in person, to make sketches and paint on the spot. He did so to make the contents he found important in the symbol visible by his painting.

Vision, commerce and society in Geoffrey Hill's early poetry

Since 1953, when Anthony Thwaite described Geoffrey Hill as a ‘runic visionary’ in the Oxford student magazine The Isis, the visionary has been a site of contestation for Hill and his critics. Tom Paulin's 1992 essay on Hill, ‘A Visionary Nationalist’, identified vision with an entrenched belief in ‘the magical transcendence of art’. While Paulin seems to have overlooked the fact that Hill's early poems subject this very belief to intense scrutiny, it can sometimes appear that their dense, hermetic forms are merely the despairing flip side of the transcendence they rebuke. In this paper, I suggest some ways to read the prosodic and thematic disposition of the mythical elements in Hill's early poetry, arguing that they constitute a complex, differential attitude towards the temporality of visionary thought. My argument draws on the notion of the speculative proposition as expounded by Gillian Rose, to explore how Hill inhabits the gulf between art's vision and the world of commerce and society. Through close readings of ‘Doctor Faustus’ and ‘Of Commerce and Society’, as well as Hill's early essay ‘The Poetry of Allen Tate’, the paper suggests that Hill's early poetry works towards an apprehension of society as productive content rather than repressed other.

A Mythic Journey to Polyphemus, Tepegöz and Grendal

Human shaped, huge sized, sometimes one eyed, three or seven headed giants /monsters are unique folkloric, mythic elements of oral and written cultures and traditions through Greek, Latin, East and West civilizations. From Polyphemus of Homer's classical Odyssey to Anglo-Saxon Beowulf, Turkish Tepegöz (One Eyed-Giant) of the Book of Dede Korkut (Dede Qorqut), Sinbad of Arabic Thousand and One Nights, Fénelon's Telemachus, Joyce's modern Ulysses, even to J.R.R. Tolkien's Norse figures in the Hobbit of our age several mythic adaptations have taken place in Western and Eastern literatures from around the world. Polyphemus, Tepegöz and Beowulf remind of well-known mythic legends built on relationships of heroes and giants of the legends such as Telemachus, Arimaspoi, Kabandha, Psoglav, Jian or one eyed-man eating Cyclops in Sinbad the Sailor etc., In this term, in this study, a comparison of gigantic and heroic figures making a mythic journey to Odyssey, The Story of Basat, Killer of the One-Eyed-Giant (Tepegöz) and Beowulf will be presented to the attentions from a perspective of comparative literature and evaluated their similarities and differences by comparative examples. Here the aim will be to know both the others' and our own works closer, and recognize their impacts and interactions on each other's and also discover their places in the world literature.

From the Desert to the Kingdom of God : Narrative Space and the Temptation Story (Q 4:1-13)

The following study will present the Temptation Story (Q 4:1-13) as a reflexive narrative of Q people, rather than a mere Christological narrative about Jesus. A narratological approach to the study of Q explains more about the socio-historical context of Q through a world which Q reveals, since narrative is an indicator of the culture or social locus of the behind the people. Especially, narrative space plays a significant role in a narrative, reflecting a culture and history as well as the particular locale within the society in which the narrative is produced.<BR> This paper focuses on the narrative space of the Temptation story (Q 4:1-13). Its role will be presented as a part of the prologue of the Q narrative. The prologue introduces Q as a narrative derived from the ordinary poor people of Roman Galilee who believed that forgiveness would bring God’s kingdom. The Temptation story (4:1-13) intensely and symbolically displays the issues of Q in its narrative space which is involved with the social locus of the people behind Q. Nonetheless its mythical elements and obvious citations are derived from the Old Testament. Considering the fact that the narrative selectively chooses the meaningful and relevant anecdotes/events, the list of Jesus temptations implies the immediate issues of the particular circumstances of people in Roman Palestine such as poverty, and oppression under the temple and Roman world. This is enforced by the fact that narrative space is critically important for efforts to perceive the relationship between characters and objects as well as the setting and movements of the protagonist and antagonist. The socio- political symbolic places which are involved with the devil’s activity in this temptation story displays Q’s intention of establishing the spatial framework in this regard. Moreover, the unusual locale of the desert and the contrast between the dynamic actions of the devil and the passivity of Jesus throughout the temptation story plays a symbolic role in revealing the characteristics of the mission of the Q people. Thus, as the prologue of the Q Temptation story unfolds, the entire progression of the narrative Q moves from the desert to the kingdom of God.

The Fisher King of West Egg

The Fisher King of West Egg

The Fisher King of West Egg

The Fisher King of West Egg

Kundera’s kidnap revisited

This article is concerned with Milan Kundera’s essay ‘A kidnapped West, or Culture bows out’, which first appeared in 1984. It considers Kundera’s essay in the context of the Reagan/Thatcher/Kohl era, examining the mythical elements of Kundera’s ‘Central Europe’, its diversity and its unifying elements. Rather than regard the essay as a museum piece, the article reflects on Kundera’s lasting and unresolved concern with the impact of totalitarianism – communist, Nazi and capitalist – on European identity and culture.

The Snake in the Tree in Abu al-ʿAlaʾ al-Maʿarri’s Epistle of Forgiveness: Critical Essay and Translation

Abstract This study first proposes to interpret the opening passages of Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī’s (363-449/973-1058) Risālat al-Ghufrān (Epistle of Forgiveness) in terms of the mythic, lexic and ludic elements that make up the substance of what is essentially a non-narrative discourse. The study argues that al-Maʿarrī uses his parodic “heavenly garden” as a “ludic space” in which his self-righteous protagonist and addressee, Ibn al-Qāriḥ, as well as his (presumed) reader, is tested with riddles, both verbal and conceptual. Ibn al-Qāriḥ fails in what I claim to be a parody of a rite of initiation (a literary counterpart to the Prophet Muḥammad’s Night Journey and Ascension): he is constantly surprised and dumbfounded by God’s mercy. This study argues that the opening passages, which play on names, epithets and lexical items relating to the snake, the snake in the tree, the black core of the heart, and related symbols of the soul and immortality are ultimately grounded in the shared Mesopotamian-Mediterranean symbolic matrix. It argues that the bivalent image of the snake as a source of longevity and of death, of deception and of veracity, is found in the interwoven Christian symbolism of Eve, the serpent, the tree of life, the Virgin Mary, Christ and the tree of the Cross. Second, it offers an annotated translation of the opening passages of al-Maʿarrī’s Risālat al-Ghufrān.

An approach to the mentalities of Franks and Byzantines in 1204

The object of the present essay is to open up new approaches to the topic of the fourth crusade and the conquest of Constantinople by the Latins in 1204. Apart from the discussion on the problematic recent application of the concepts we are going to address, I have relied on methodological tools for the history of mentalities, attempting to shed new light on the interpretation of the actions of both Franks and Byzantines. The survey on the marvellous in the accounts of that period reveals to us anew the capital of Byzantium, characterized and accompanied by the mythical element. The key of my endeavor is the interaction of the average man’s frame of mind with the stimuli surrounding him. In doing so, we will be able to comprehend the individual’s demeanor, the human action that determines the historical process. Furthermore, we shall scrutinize a bifurcated Christian cosmos, with similar structure of thought and contrary perspectives.

Tara Goedjen and Caroline Graham

In September 2011, the two authors embarked on a critical and creative exploration of one of Australia’s ‘thinnest’ places – the Top End, a space full of history and crocodiles and misunderstanding. The resulting creative nonfiction article is a journey through the contemporary and mythical elements of the region’s landscape – from boabs to curlews, gorges, highways and UFOs. Integrating history, myth and conversation, the writers investigate the relationship between story and place, past and present, fact and fiction. The notion of boundaries is central to this exploration – physical, cultural and historical boundaries are warped, contested and rearranged throughout the essay, as the writers ask difficult questions about one of Australia’s most beautiful and lonely spaces. In co-authoring the essay, the writers also investigate the act of shared storytelling and the influence of perspective, place, and position when constructing stories. Note: This creative work was not double blind refereed but was ‘blind’ reviewed by a panel of experts

Folkloric Axis of Relexified Language and the Subversion of Colonial Cultural Hierarchy

Language has an aspect of universality and another aspect of particularity. Ethnic culture is conveyed through the aspect of particularity, and that is the very point which makes a nation particular and its culture distinct. Colonization by imposing colonial language and non-native cultural poetics perishes the aspect of particularity of the substrate language. However, the counteracting strategy of relexification appeals to the universality of superstrate language to transmit the particularity of substrate language. Ethnic folk stories, myths, mythical elements, fables, parables, proverbs, and idioms are interposed on the colonial language to make ethnic colonized culture universally palpable. In this regard, the aspect of universality is provided by the colonial superstrate language and the aspect of particularity by the colonized ethnic language. In general, because of the ubiquity of mythic elements in time and place, the folkloric aspect of relexified language gives nations the sense of dignified historical background and makes the relexified work relevant to a multitude of societies, rather than just one ethnic local community. This paper deals with the way Chinua Achebe uses the folkloric axis of relexified language to bring the particularities of Ibo culture on universal scale and above all to restore the dignity of Ibo cultural identity which was lost through colonial discourse: “Thus, as represented by Chinua Achebe, and contrary to the discourse of colonial anthropology, Umuofia, the primordial Igbo village emerges as a locus of reflective civility” (Irele 9). Achebe’s relexified language gives voice to Ibo experience throughout the English speaking world. DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2013.v2n9p487

영화 '왓치맨(Watchmen)'에 나타난 슈퍼히어로 의상 분석

In order to create a national myth and be able to control international society, America with her short national history, used popular culture to accomplish these goals. The medium fit this purpose the best was the use of superhero characters based on comics. Born and developed from the 1930s through the 1960s, which could be seen as America`s national crisis era, superhero characters were thorough advocates of American justice and was perfect for the role of spreading the legitimacy of American ideology. From the 1970s, superhero characters became part of movies and became even more influential through the Hollywood`s massive film industry and the box office success. American ideology in superhero characters symbolically appeared in movie costumes. Starting with Superman and Batman, the very first and typical superhero characters` costumes work as metaphors for realization of American justice. After the 1980s, superheroes were newly developed through a genre called graphic novel and the most representative piece of this genre is Alan Moore`s Watchmen. In the Watchmen, which was also turn into a movie in 2009, six changed superhero characters appear ranging from a non-human superhero, villain superhero, superhero with mental disorder and superhero with sexual impotency, the characters were never-seen-before superheroes with different aspects that connote introspection and philosophical ideology. The changed type of heroes and ideology became another form of heroes, and this brought changes to character costumes that were never considered before. The superhero costumes that used to symbolize America now express different types of superhero by borrowing exotic mythical elements, undressing, pastiche and daily life clothes. The superhero characters and their changes in costumes from Watchmen imply American popular culture`s introspective tendency. Amongst these changes, we need to raise our critical vision towards popular culture.

Doña Marina/La Malinche

This paper provides a historiographical approach to the figure of Doña Marina or La Malinche, the interpreter of Hernán Cortés during the conquest of Mexico, in order to reassess the fictionalization of the character that we often find in Translation Studies. It is argued that this discipline has used her name in an impressionistic way and, therefore, it seems necessary to complement the translation scholar’s approach with that of the historian. The paper will explore the ways in which Doña Marina has been presented by translation scholars. The next section will provide the perspective of historians, focusing on three aspects relevant for Translation Studies: (1) the facts known about her origin, which explain her ability to communicate in two local languages, (2) her role as interpreter during the conquest of Mexico, (3) her alleged participation in the Cholulan massacre as an informant of Cortés. It will conclude with a discussion that aims to highlight the contrast between the use of impressionistic views of historic figures and the more balanced narratives based on factual rather than mythical elements.

Transcending conventional identity structures: Dorothea Smartt's re-negotiated self-projections

Dorothea Smartt’s poetics reflects an innovative paradigm by which she challenges and reshapes concepts of national and gender identities. She explores old and new world inheritances, and skillfully traverses historical, cultural, temporal and spatial boundaries to arrive at a re-negotiated and reinvigorated identity. Smartt’s poetics thus evinces multiple elements: while it synthesizes Caribbean and Black British traditions, it also enlarges these traditions by incorporating mythic elements. By excavating the Medusa myth as an African legacy, Smartt re-connects old and new world inheritances, in a stratagem that empowers writers in both Black British and Caribbean literary traditions. Key words: Black British Literature, Caribbean literary aesthetics, Medusa myth, identity.

Who Writes Iran? Counter-narratives and the Transition from Personal to Collective Historiography in Contemporary Fiction

This article is an account of a particular version of a known phenomenon in Persian literature; that is, literature that takes on the responsibility of journalism. In Iran, as in many other societies, limitations imposed by the political apparatus on the field of journalism have placed and are placing a significant part of the responsibilities of that field on the shoulders of the literary discourse. This phenomenon, particularly after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, has become more visible. Indeed it has led to the emergence of a category called Gozaresh-Qesseh (Report-Story) to designate this subgenre. Referring to a number of recent Persian works of fiction, this article explores the function of mythic elements employed in these texts to define the interaction between competing historiographical narratives. It also attempts to define the space created as a result of both clashes and cooperation between history and fiction in modern Persian literature.

Syngman Rhee’s Vision and Reality: The Establishment of the Nation and Thereafter

A thorough analysis of Syngman Rhee’s vision of the Republic of Korea that goes beyond a mere historical evaluation of Rhee as the first President of the Republic of Korea is required in order to evaluate the direction taken by Korea in the contemporary era. Syngman Rhee has been evaluated as an independence activist and patriot who played a leading role in the establishment of the Republic of Korea. On the other hand, he is also regarded as a dictator whose hunger for power made him unable to fathom the thought of any political dissension. Such historical evaluations of Syngman Rhee hinder discussions on the identity of the newly born Republic of Korea, particularly as Korea now faces the task of re-highlighting its core identity. In this regard, the examination of the birth and development of the state based on the task of fostering a better understanding of Syngman Rhee’s basic vision for the newly born Republic of Korea, while removing the ‘mythical elements’ raised by various discourses, represents an essential element of any such efforts. This study not only points out the need for an active discourse that is based not on Syngman Rhee as an individual, but on his role as one of the core figures behind the establishment of the Republic of Korea, but also analyzes Rhee’s visions and ideals for the establishment of the Republic of Korea and examines how his ideals were refracted when combined with the political reality on the ground.

An Arthurian Omaggio to Michael Murrin and James Nohrnberg

Michael Murrin and James Nohrnberg are two of the most prominent Arthurian scholars of the past half century. Although neither works directly on Malory as a specialist, they share an interest in literary history, the influence of Arthurian literature, and the mythic structure that romances inherited from biblical and classical materials. This special issue of Arthuriana, based on work presented at two meetings of the Purdue University Comparative Prose Conference, highlights the influence on both scholars of both the Arthurian legend and the work of C.S. Lewis on myth. A meeting of the Comparative Prose Conference devoted to C.S. Lewis was held at Wittenberg University, November 1 and 2, 2007. Another meeting, an omaggio to Professors Murrin and Nohrnberg from their former students, was held in the Anniversary Drawing Room at Purdue University, November 5 and 6, 2009. Arthurian literature, as Professor Murrin explains in a passage in The Veil of Allegor y (1969), relies on the connection between myth criticism and allegory that Lewis' work often exemplified: Critics could identify myth and allegory because they recognized a basic kinship between them. A myth, like a metaphor or an extended allegory, is by definition open-ended: it invites interpretation. As Lewis demonstrates, a summary of the Orpheus myth-his descent into Hades in particular-evokes deep responses from anyone who hears it. This is true of allegorical tales as well. To take an example from Spenser: Saint George set out from the court of the Faerie Queene to kill a dragon in the Garden of Eden. The whole idea of reversing the Genesis narrative of the Fall is immediately arresting and demands interpretation. Or take an old romance like that of Huon, who on a journey from Paris to Babylon met the Fairy King Oberon in his magical wood and there received great gifts of power. The basic plot of an allegory must always be mythic. Where it is not, the poet has failed-has not succeeded in converting his tale into metaphor. (The Veil of Allegory, p. 99) Murrin's reference to C.S. Lewis and to a journey from Paris to the Middle East takes us to two areas of Arthurian studies that further connect this selection of papers. Lewis wrote a celebrated review of the Oxford edition that Eugene Vinaver edited after the discovery of the Winchester manuscript of Malory's masterpiece, and he never ceased promoting Malory as essential reading, but he also promoted those Italian redactions of chivalric and Arthurian romance by Boiardo and Ariosto, whose hero Orlando leaves Paris for the Middle East and its magical landscape, like Huon of Bordeaux before him. These romances, in turn, were the models for Spenser's Faerie Queene. In 'The Arthurian Torso,' the third section of the first part of The Analogy of The Faerie Queene (1976), Professor Nohrnberg turns to Prince Arthur, the figure who connects each book of Spenser's romance, and at once suggests his mythic elements: The multiple unity of The Faerie Queene has Arthur for its emblem. . . . His resemblance to the other knights turns up often. . . . It has more than once been suggested that Arthur was something of an afterthought on Spenser's part; he has been described as a device adopted late in the poem's composition to connect an otherwise disjointed Ariostan serial. . . . [But the] allegory presumes the possibility of a mind embellished with all the virtues that the poem celebrates. . . . Thus the once and future king in Spenser is the duodecimal or 'magnanimous' Arthur, in whose greater mind the virtues of all the other knights reside. . . . Spenser's knights might be said to rotate the service of virtue from legend to legend, while the stationless and free-lance Arthur functions once in each of their legends in their stead-like an itinerant Levite. . . . An obvious Arthurian symbol of completeness is the round table. In Malory, we read that Merlin devised it as a symbol of the wholeness of the world, or the unity of the Arthurian order. …

Merlin, Magic, and the Meta-fantastic: The Matter of That Hideous Strength

Merlin is important to the revival of Arthurian and mythic elements in a modern context fictionalized by C.S. Lewis in That Hideous Strength . But Merlin is especially key to understanding the meta-fantastic elements of the story, including the narrative method that bridges science fiction material with that of the fantastic as well as addresses a number of linguistic concerns about the inefficacy of literary language and the difficulty of awakening poetic faith in a modern audience.