“You Took My Spirit Captive among the Leaves”: The Creation of Blodeuwedd in Re-Imaginings of the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi
Issue: Vol 16 No. 2 (2014)
Journal: Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies
Subject Areas: Religious Studies
Abstract:
This article traces the portrayal of Blodeuwedd’s creation, the woman fashioned from flowers in the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi, from the medieval version to twentieth and twenty-first century retellings of the story. Blodeuwedd’s creation will be situated in the wider context of the idea of the automaton and will be read as a posthuman construct, eerily relevant in today’s cybernetic society. The symbolism of the flowers from which she is created will be analyzed and the curious alignment of flowers to Sexuality, non-existent in the medieval text but exceedingly prominent in the modern versions, will be explored. This article will concentrate on mainly three works, which present diverse re-imaginings of the medieval material: Saunders Lewis’ Blodeuwedd, Alan Garner’s The Owl Service and Gwyneth Lewis’ The Meat Tree.
Author: Cara Bartels-Bland
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