Narrative Challenges to the Hero in Welsh Myth and Modern Fantasy

Abstract

Given that these vast differences exist between the challenges the heroes face in the Welsh tales and the challenges the heroes face in the modern tales, it would almost seem impossible to find basis for a comparison of the two. That basis, however, lies both in the structure of the challenges and in the details the modern authors borrow from the early tales. The Welsh tales are purely episodic, with each episode focussing on one individual's alienation and restoration, and the modern tales build to a cumulative conclusion, involving the fate of all mankind, but the modern tales achieve their universal endings through the results o f many individual challenges. These modern individual challenges follow the same structure that the Welsh challenges do. The hero, forced to act alone, must decide what to do based on the guidelines that the author has developed thematically. Then society can be restored, and the hero restored to society. The authors of the modern stories further invite the comparison themselves, by using and ackowledging The Mabinogi, and by borrowing bits of plot, along with names of people and places, from the Welsh tales. . . . In dealing with these three groups of stories, I will try only to prove that the challenges the heroes face are, indeed, the need for communication and the need for trust, growth and acceptance of the task at hand. I leave my theory on mankind's motives for repeatedly placing these challenges into mythology for the reader to ponder. [From Introduction]