The Mabinogion, ed. Sioned Davies
Feb. 2nd, 2011 10:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meganbmooreI’ve been at least passingly familiar with the eleven tales of The Mabinogion for years, and various bits of formative childhood literature (namely Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain series-though I actually recall being fonder of the Westmark series-and Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising series) draw heavily from them, but I’ve never actually sat down to read them all before.
The first four stories, the “Four Branches,” are the most mythic. The related stories are sprawling and the characters tend to show up in small parts in other tales, or be revealed to be connected to previous tales, and sometimes are following one set of characters before jumping to another. This is where you get things like gender swap MPREG bestial incest, and men who cannot live unless their feet are resting in the lap of a virgin. There are also a lot of put upon women, who have men who appear to be fairly understanding of things like gang rape (I feel I've encountered far too many stories where women are exiled/killed for being raped) and apparently eating your children. I mean, as these things go.
I highly recommend readingrachelmanija 's very detailed posts on the first four branches to properly understand these things. Really, read them just because they’re extremely entertaining.
In one of the posts, she also mentions the difference between actual myth and stories based on myth and how they’re much more contained, and that’s reflected in the rest of the stories, which follow more linear, contained plots with fewer characters. These are the plots that tie into Arthuriana, and are believed by many to preserve earlier legends. There are more women who are put upon, though their men are prone to hearing things like “Gosh, I wonder if I’m a good wife?” and deciding this means their wives are shameless sluts and so they forbid their wives to speak and drag them around on dangerous journeys, and are thoroughly unappreciative when she repeatedly saves them with her cleverness. (Geraint, you are a twit. Enid, you are awesome and should have traded up.)
There’s about a hundred pages in this Oxford edition of notes, translations and pronunciation guides, and it still feels like maybe half of it gets explained. Which is my way of asking if anyone knows of any good books/articles that break things down. Particularly any focusing on Rhiannon or Enid.
The first four stories, the “Four Branches,” are the most mythic. The related stories are sprawling and the characters tend to show up in small parts in other tales, or be revealed to be connected to previous tales, and sometimes are following one set of characters before jumping to another. This is where you get things like gender swap MPREG bestial incest, and men who cannot live unless their feet are resting in the lap of a virgin. There are also a lot of put upon women, who have men who appear to be fairly understanding of things like gang rape (I feel I've encountered far too many stories where women are exiled/killed for being raped) and apparently eating your children. I mean, as these things go.
I highly recommend reading
rachelmanija 's very detailed posts on the first four branches to properly understand these things. Really, read them just because they’re extremely entertaining.In one of the posts, she also mentions the difference between actual myth and stories based on myth and how they’re much more contained, and that’s reflected in the rest of the stories, which follow more linear, contained plots with fewer characters. These are the plots that tie into Arthuriana, and are believed by many to preserve earlier legends. There are more women who are put upon, though their men are prone to hearing things like “Gosh, I wonder if I’m a good wife?” and deciding this means their wives are shameless sluts and so they forbid their wives to speak and drag them around on dangerous journeys, and are thoroughly unappreciative when she repeatedly saves them with her cleverness. (Geraint, you are a twit. Enid, you are awesome and should have traded up.)
There’s about a hundred pages in this Oxford edition of notes, translations and pronunciation guides, and it still feels like maybe half of it gets explained. Which is my way of asking if anyone knows of any good books/articles that break things down. Particularly any focusing on Rhiannon or Enid.