The Triumph of Folly and Piety: The Transformation of the Image of Merlin’s Mother From a King’s Daughter to a Fool
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17072/2073-6681-2026-2-106-116Keywords:
Merlin; Arthuriana; plot of Merlin’s birth; motif complex; synthetic image; demonologization of the image; binarism; early modern drama; Shakespeare’s apocrypha; contextual analysis; historical poetics; A. N. Veselovsky; William Rowley.Abstract
The article examines two main images related to Merlin's birth story: the image of Arthur's prophet himself and the image of his mother. The study aims to reveal the mutual influence of the images and their transformation as theological, social, demographic, political, medical, and literary contexts developed and as cultural and moral values changed. The contexts include the demonization of the supernatural, the monopolization of the motif of immaculate conception, binary thinking in the late Middle Ages and the ambivalence of the early modern mentality, theological debates about the devil's ability to fertilize, the replacement of Aristotle's single-seed theory of conception with Galen's two-seed theory, changes in laws concerning illegitimate children, high rates of bastardy in English parishes, the social responsibility of unmarried mothers in the early modern period, misogyny, witch hunt, and increased criticism of courtier morals. The article argues that the synthetic nature of Merlin's image and the irreconcilability of his demonic origins with his role in the legend of the great King Arthur led to continuous attempts to explain the supernatural conception of the future prophet and, hence, to the transformation of the social status of Merlin's mother and of the extent of her involvement in the process of conception, as well as to the demonization of the female image from the early to late Middle Ages, leading to associations of her role with that of a witch and a harlot. From the numerous texts that use the story of Merlin's birth, those in which significant changes in the interpretation of the images and the plot as a whole have been made were selected as research material, namely: chronicles of Nennius and Geoffrey of Monmouth, Layamon’s Brut, Robert de Boron’s Romance in Prose, Michael Drayton’s Poli-Olbion and Piers Gaveston, Earl of Cornwall: His Life, Death, and Fortune, Thomas Heywood’s Life of Merlin and William Rowley’s The Birth of Merlin, or The Child Found His Father.
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