The Song of Silence / Queering the National Myth: Gender, Weirdness and Magical Realism in Le Roman de Silence and Retold Arthuriana

沉默之歌/质疑民族神话：《沉默的罗马》和《亚瑟王》重述中的性别、怪异和魔幻现实主义

• 批准号: 2487345
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Manchester
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2021 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2487345
• 关键词: Song; Silence; Queering; National; Myth

The creative component of the proposed project (ca 90,000 words) will be a retelling of Le Roman de Silence, a 13th century French verse-romance which introduced a genderfluid knight to the Arthurian mythos. My retelling, The Song of Silence, will emulate Madeline Miller's Circe and other recent mythic retellings in rendering epic poetry as magical realist prose. Written in the style of oral history, the story will be recast and its conclusions subverted, posing questions about queer historiography. By queering the Arthurian mythos - Britain's legendary origin story - I hope to explore the intersections between gender and nationalism in Britain today.The critical component (ca 30,000 words) will argue that queer retellings of Arthuriana (and mythology/history more generally) can be couched within the traditions of magical realism, exploring the setting and world of Arthuriana as a space which is inherently queer and inherently a vehicle for retroactive political commentary. Delving into what Donald Hoffman has recently termed the 'Arthurian closet', I will review existing scholarship on queer medievalism and the queering of Arthuriana in popular culture, while performing a close queer reading of the Roman de Silence and of the wider Arthurian canon. Does Arthurian Britain, with its uncanny geography and status as 'folk history' in British cultural heritage, constitute a queer space through its sheer weirdness? What has been its function, in previous retellings, as an allegorical reflection of Britain? And can this queer space, despite its ahistoricity, be used by writers to legitimize the historicity of queer narratives?In 1990 Simon Gaunt wrote that 'Heldris de Cornouaille's Roman de Silence appears to deliberately engage with problems that interest modern theorists'. Arthuriana, the Journal of Arthurian Studies, has dedicated two special issues to Le Roman de Silence, once in 1997 and again in 2002. More recent scholarship on the queering of King Arthur has included queer readings of the Lancelot-Grail cycle and of contemporary retellings of the Arthurian mythos, including Donald L. Hoffman's queer analysis of Arthurian cinema, published in Arthuriana in 2019. Hoffman differentiates between 'queer (gay)' and 'queer (peculiar)', whilst arguing that the latter can still be read as signifying the former.In both The Song of Silence and in my critical thesis, I will propose that this dual understanding of queerness is specifically useful for writing queer retellings of Arthuriana. The inherently queer (peculiar) world of the Arthurian mythos, with its dragons and strange happenstances and dreamlike internal logic, provides a useful vehicle for grounding queer narratives and characters in an imagined past. King Arthur's Britain is ahistorical, but tales of King Arthur usually insist upon their own historicity, and enjoy a strange quasihistorical status within British cultural heritage: within this contrast there is significant room for the exploration of realism.

拟议项目的创意部分（约 90,000 字）将是对《沉默的罗马》的重述，这是一部 13 世纪的法国浪漫诗篇，在亚瑟王神话中引入了一位性别流动的骑士。我的重述《沉默之歌》将效仿玛德琳·米勒的《喀耳刻》和其他最近的神话重述，将史诗变成魔幻现实主义散文。这个故事以口述历史的风格写成，将被重新改写，其结论将被颠覆，对酷儿史学提出质疑。通过酷儿亚瑟王神话——英国传奇的起源故事——我希望探索当今英国性别与民族主义之间的交叉点。关键部分（约 30,000 字）将论证对亚瑟王（以及更广泛的神话/历史）的酷儿重述可以在魔幻现实主义的传统中表达，探索亚瑟王的背景和世界作为一个本质上是酷儿和本质上是一个空间的空间。 追溯政治评论的工具。通过深入研究唐纳德·霍夫曼（Donald Hoffman）最近所说的“亚瑟王壁橱”，我将回顾关于酷儿中世纪主义和流行文化中亚瑟王酷儿的现有学术研究，同时对《罗马沉默》和更广泛的亚瑟王经典进行仔细的酷儿解读。亚瑟王时期的英国，因其奇异的地理位置和英国文化遗产中的“民间历史”地位，是否因其纯粹的怪异而构成了一个酷儿空间？在之前的重述中，它作为英国寓言的反映有何作用？尽管这个酷儿空间具有非历史性，但能否被作家用来使酷儿叙事的历史性合法化？1990 年，西蒙·冈特 (Simon Gaunt) 写道，“赫尔德里斯·德·科努瓦耶 (Heldris de Cornouaille) 的《沉默的罗曼》似乎刻意探讨了现代理论家感兴趣的问题”。 《亚瑟王研究杂志》曾于 1997 年和 2002 年为《沉默的罗曼》专门出版了两期特刊。最近关于亚瑟王酷儿现象的学术研究包括对兰斯洛特-圣杯周期的酷儿解读和对亚瑟王神话的当代重述，其中包括唐纳德·L·霍夫曼 (Donald L. Hoffman) 对亚瑟王电影的酷儿分析，发表于《亚瑟王》杂志 2019。霍夫曼区分了“酷儿（同性恋）”和“酷儿（特殊）”，同时认为后者仍然可以被解读为表示前者。在《沉默之歌》和我的批判论文中，我将提出，这种对酷儿性的双重理解对于写《亚瑟王》的酷儿重述特别有用。亚瑟王神话中固有的酷儿（特殊）世界，其中有龙、奇怪的偶然事件和梦幻般的内部逻辑，为将酷儿叙事和人物扎根于想象的过去提供了有用的工具。亚瑟王的英国是非历史性的，但亚瑟王的故事通常坚持自己的历史性，并在英国文化遗产中享有奇怪的准历史地位：在这种对比中，现实主义的探索有很大的空间。