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.

该项目的创意部分(约9万字)将是对《沉默的罗马人》的重述，这是一部13世纪的法国诗篇浪漫小说，为亚瑟王神话引入了一位性别分明的骑士。我的重述作品《沉默之歌》将效仿玛德琳·米勒的《圆圈》和其他最近的神话重述作品，将史诗呈现为魔幻现实主义散文。以口述历史的风格书写，故事将被重塑，其结论将被颠覆，提出关于酷儿史学的问题。通过解读亚瑟王神话--英国传奇的起源故事--我希望探索当今英国性别和民族主义之间的交集。关键部分(约3万字)将争辩说，对亚瑟王的古怪复述(以及更广泛的神话/历史)可以被表达在魔幻现实主义的传统中，探索亚瑟王的背景和世界，作为一个天生古怪的空间，天生就是追溯政治评论的工具。深入研究唐纳德·霍夫曼最近所说的亚瑟王的衣橱，我将回顾现有的关于酷儿中世纪主义和流行文化中阿尔瑟里亚纳的酷儿的学术研究，同时仔细阅读《沉默的罗马人》和更广泛的亚瑟王经典。亚瑟王时代的不列颠，在英国文化遗产中有着离奇的地理位置和“民间历史”的地位，它纯粹的怪诞构成了一个奇特的空间吗？在之前的重述中，它作为对英国的寓言反映有什么作用？这种奇怪的空间，尽管它是非历史性的，但作家们能利用它来证明同性恋叙事的历史性吗？1990年，西蒙·冈特写道：“赫尔德里斯·德·科努瓦耶的《沉默的罗马人》似乎故意涉及现代理论家感兴趣的问题。”《亚瑟王研究杂志》专门为《沉默的罗马人》出版了两期特刊，一期是1997年，另一期是2002年。最近关于亚瑟王怪诞的学术研究包括对兰斯洛特-圣杯循环的怪诞解读，以及对亚瑟王神话的当代重述，包括唐纳德·L·霍夫曼(Donald L.Hoffman)2019年在《亚瑟王》杂志上发表的对亚瑟王电影的怪异分析。霍夫曼区分了“酷儿(基佬)”和“酷儿(奇特)”，同时认为后者仍然可以被解读为是前者的象征。在“沉默之歌”和我的批评论文中，我都会提出，这种对酷儿的双重理解对写阿尔苏里亚娜的酷儿复述特别有用。亚瑟王神话固有的奇特(奇异)世界，其龙、奇怪的事件和梦幻般的内在逻辑，为将奇特的叙事和人物建立在想象的过去中提供了一个有用的工具。亚瑟王的英国是历史的，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一种奇怪的准历史地位：在这种对比中，现实主义有很大的探索空间。