Brings together fourteen essays that examine the range of representations of Welsh mythology, folklore, and ritual in popular culture. Topics covered include the twentieth-century fantasy fiction of Evangeline Walton, the Welsh presence in the films of Walt Disney, Welshness in folk music, non-animated film and postmodern literature.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments     

Introduction: Re-Imagining Wales
AUDREY L. BECKER and KRISTIN NOONE     
Celtic Studies and Modern Fantasy Literature
C.W. SULLIVAN III     
“The Rough, Savage Strength of Earth”: Evangeline Walton’s Human Heroes and Mythic Spaces
KRISTIN NOONE     
Branwen’s Shame: Voicing the Silent Feminine in Evangeline Walton’s The Children of Llyr
NICOLE A. THOMAS     
Disavowing Maternity in Evangeline Walton’s The Virgin and the Swine: Fantasy Meets the Social Protest Fiction of the 1930s
DEBORAH HOOKER     
“An Age-Old Memory”: Arthur Machen’s Celtic Redaction of the Welsh Revival in The Great Return
GEOFFREY REITER     
Magical Goods, “Orphaned” Exchanges, Punishment and Power in the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi
SUSANA BROWER     
The Hand at the Window: Twm Siôn Cati, the Welsh Colonial Trickster
JONATHAN EVANS and STEPHEN KNIGHT     
An Irregular Union: Exploring the Welsh Connection to a Popular African-American Wedding Ritual
TYLER D. PARRY     
Constructing Myth in Music: Heather Dale, King Arthur and “Culhwch and Olwen”
MEGAN MACALYSTRE     
Torchwood’s “Spooky-Do’s”: A Popular Culture Perspective on Celtic Mythology
LYNNETTE R. PORTER     
Everyday Magic: Howl’s Moving Castle and Fantasy as Sociopolitical Commentary
CAROLYNN E. WILCOX     
Loosely Based: The Problems of Adaptation in Disney’s The Black Cauldron
JEFF HICKS     
We’re Not in Cymru Anymore: What’s Really Happening in the Online Mabinogi
CLAY KINCHEN SMITH     
Temporality, Teleology and the Mabinogi in the Twenty-First Century
AUDREY L. BECKER     

Further Reading     
About the Contributors     
Index