Welsh Mythology and Folklore in Popular Culture

Audrey L. Becker is an assistant professor of English literature at Marygrove College in Detroit, Michigan. She writes on the intersection between Renaissance literature and cultural studies. Kristin Noone is an English instructor and writing center faculty at Irvine Valley College in Southern California; her research interests include medievalism and adaptation, heterotemporalities, superheroes, fantasy and the fantastic, and popular romance, and she has published on topics from ethics in the work of Terry Pratchett to the symbolism of Dean Winchester’s pie in Supernatural.

• Table of ContentsAcknowledgments      Introduction: Re-Imagining WalesAUDREY L. BECKER and KRISTIN NOONE      Celtic Studies and Modern Fantasy LiteratureC.W. SULLIVAN III      “The Rough, Savage Strength of Earth”: Evangeline Walton’s Human Heroes and Mythic SpacesKRISTIN NOONE      Branwen’s Shame: Voicing the Silent Feminine in Evangeline Walton’s The Children of LlyrNICOLE A. THOMAS      Disavowing Maternity in Evangeline Walton’s The Virgin and the Swine: Fantasy Meets the Social Protest Fiction of the 1930sDEBORAH HOOKER      “An Age-Old Memory”: Arthur Machen’s Celtic Redaction of the Welsh Revival in The Great ReturnGEOFFREY REITER      Magical Goods, “Orphaned” Exchanges, Punishment and Power in the Fourth Branch of the MabinogiSUSANA BROWER      The Hand at the Window: Twm Siôn Cati, the Welsh Colonial TricksterJONATHAN EVANS and STEPHEN KNIGHT      An Irregular Union: Exploring the Welsh Connection to a Popular African-American Wedding RitualTYLER D. PARRY      Constructing Myth in Music: Heather Dale, King Arthur and “Culhwch and Olwen”MEGAN MACALYSTRE      Torchwood’s “Spooky-Do’s”: A Popular Culture Perspective on Celtic MythologyLYNNETTE R. PORTER      Everyday Magic: Howl’s Moving Castle and Fantasy as Sociopolitical CommentaryCAROLYNN E. WILCOX      Loosely Based: The Problems of Adaptation in Disney’s The Black CauldronJEFF HICKS      We’re Not in Cymru Anymore: What’s Really Happening in the Online MabinogiCLAY KINCHEN SMITH      Temporality, Teleology and the Mabinogi in the Twenty-First CenturyAUDREY L. BECKER      Further Reading      About the Contributors      Index