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90，000字）将是对《沉默的罗马》的复述，这是一部世纪的法国诗歌浪漫小说，它将一个性别流动的骑士引入了亚瑟王神话。我的复述，沉默之歌，将模仿玛德琳米勒的喀耳刻和其他最近的神话复述在渲染史诗作为神奇的现实主义散文。以口述历史的风格写成，故事将被改写，其结论将被颠覆，对酷儿史学提出质疑。通过对亚瑟王神话--英国的传奇起源故事--的梳理，我希望能探索当今英国性别与民族主义之间的交叉点。（约30，000字）会认为对《亚瑟里安娜》的酷儿重述（以及更普遍的神话/历史）可以在魔幻现实主义的传统中表达，探索阿瑟里亚纳的背景和世界，作为一个空间，它本质上是奇怪的，本质上是一个追溯政治评论的工具。深入研究唐纳德霍夫曼最近称之为“亚瑟王的壁橱”，我将回顾现有的关于中世纪酷儿和流行文化中的亚瑟亚纳酷儿的学术研究，同时对《沉默的罗马人》和更广泛的亚瑟王正典进行近距离的酷儿阅读。亚瑟王时代的英国，以其神秘的地理和英国文化遗产中“民间历史”的地位，是否通过其纯粹的怪异构成了一个奇怪的空间？在以前的复述中，它作为英国的寓言反映的功能是什么？这个奇怪的空间，尽管它的非历史性，可以被作家用来合法化奇怪的叙述的历史性？1990年，西蒙·冈特（Simon Gaunt）写道：“赫尔德里斯·德·科努瓦耶（Heldris de Cornouaille）的《沉默的罗马》（Roman de Silence）似乎有意涉及现代理论家感兴趣的问题。《亚瑟王研究杂志》（The Journal of Arthuriana）为《沉默的罗马》（Le Roman de Silence）出版了两期特刊，一次是在1997年，另一次是在2002年。最近关于亚瑟的古怪研究包括对兰斯洛特-圣杯循环的古怪解读，以及对亚瑟王神话的当代复述，包括唐纳德·L。霍夫曼对亚瑟王电影的酷儿分析，于2019年发表在《亚瑟王》上。霍夫曼区分了“酷儿（同性恋）”和“酷儿（特殊的同性恋）”，同时认为后者仍然可以被解读为前者的象征。在《沉默之歌》和我的批评论文中，我将提出，这种对酷儿的双重理解特别适用于对阿瑟里亚纳的酷儿复述。亚瑟王神话中固有的古怪（奇特）世界，有龙、奇怪的偶然事件和梦幻般的内在逻辑，为将古怪的叙述和人物建立在想象的过去中提供了一个有用的载体。亚瑟的英国是非历史的，但亚瑟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，有现实主义探索的重要空间。