The Mists of Avalon: Difference between revisions
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A 1983 novel by [[Marion Zimmer Bradley]] that [[retelling|retold]] the [[Arthurian legend]] from the perspective of the women in his life, particularly Morgan. | A 1983 novel by [[Marion Zimmer Bradley]] that [[retelling|retold]] the [[Arthurian legend]] from the perspective of the women in his life, particularly Morgan. | ||
Revision as of 14:45, 21 February 2007
A 1983 novel by Marion Zimmer Bradley that retold the Arthurian legend from the perspective of the women in his life, particularly Morgan.
The novel was a bestseller, breaking out of the SF ghetto and landing on the NYT best seller list. It also received critical acclaim, winning the 1984 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel.
The novel also offered a critical turning point in fantasy and feminist SF alike. The reclamation of the Arthurian legend reintroduced a new generation to the material, spawning a flood of Arthurian cycle works.
Within the history of feminist SF, the novel followed in the tradition of various short stories in "retelling" traditional stories from a feminist perspective. But it broke open that tradition in several ways. First, it was a serious work, not a light parody. Second, its length and depth were considerable. Third, its approach -- to retell the same story, but from the eyes of the women -- was a major advance in feminist techniques. And last, the novel introduced and popularized a theme that has influenced many other feminist SF works since: the idea of patriarchal religion, particularly Christianity, supplanting an older, egalitarian, woman-centered pagan religion. While historians, ethnologists, archaeologists, and other scholars had speculated on a pre-Christian matriarchal society,[1] The Mists of Avalon dramatized the idea, and brought it to wide popularity.
The novel was made into a TV miniseries in 2001.
Notes
- ↑ See, e.g., Jane Ellen Harrison; Johann Jakob Bachofen, Mother Right: An Investigation of the Religious and Juridical Character of Matriarchy in the Ancient World (1861); Robert Graves, The White Goddess (1948; rev. 1966); Marija Gimbutas; and J.F. del Giorgio, The Oldest Europeans.