"The Influence of The Mabinogion on Modern Fantasy Literature"
| It is, then, finally, the imaginative power of the Four Branches in particular and the other materials translated with them as The Mabinogion that has made these medieval Welsh pieces so influential in the twentieth century. Even Kenneth Jackson, after rejecting Celtic mysticism, admits that the Celtic literatures' "most outstanding characteristic is their astonishing power of imagination". American critic Gary Wolfe has argued that, to be considered fantasy, a work must deal with the impossible and that the "criterion of the impossible . . . may indeed be the first principle generally agreed upon for the study of fantasy"; and I have argued that, if Wolfe is correct, "the second principle must be the criterion of the logically conceived world". It takes an astonishing power of imagination to create a cohesive Secondary World of which the impossible is a logical part, and when the author has done his or her work well, as Ursula Le Guin says, with "all his skill, all his art, and all his heart", the result is Kenneth Morris's Book of the Three Dragons, Evangeline Walton's Mabinogi Tetralogy, Lloyd Alexander's Prydain books, Nancy Bond's A String in the Harp, Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising series, Alan Garner's The Owl Service, and of course J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings --all directly influenced by and deeply indebted to the Four Branches, to The Mabinogion, and to Lady Charlotte Guest. |
copyright © 1999 by C.W. Sullivan III