"Fairy Tales and Tales about Fairies in the Middle Ages"
Richard Green
"Fairy Tales and Tales about Fairies in the Middle Ages"
March 2, 2022
4-5 p.m.
Nowadays, the terms 'fairytale' and 'fairy story' are used to designate an unreal or unbelievable event, but up to the sixteenth century fairies were, for many people, what one scholar has termed "credible entities" (as they still are in parts of Ireland and Scandinavia). This lecture asks what difference this fact makes, or should make, to the way we read medieval stories, like Melusine, in which fairies featured prominently. In particular, it will ask whether the genre of the fantastic (as defined by the French theorist Tzvetan Todorov) was even possible in the Middle Ages, and if so, how we should imagine it. Whether, for instance, it bears any resemblance to modern fantasy fiction such as the Harry Potter novels?