Texts in Transition: Intermediality in Peredur Son of Efrog and Cynan Jones’s Bird, Blood, Snow Cover Image

Texts in Transition: Intermediality in Peredur Son of Efrog and Cynan Jones’s Bird, Blood, Snow
Texts in Transition: Intermediality in Peredur Son of Efrog and Cynan Jones’s Bird, Blood, Snow

Author(s): Aleksander Bednarski
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature, British Literature
Published by: Towarzystwo Naukowe KUL & Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II
Keywords: Welsh writing in English; Cynan Jones; Bird Blood Snow; Mabinogion; Peredur

Summary/Abstract: This paper examines Cynan Jones’s novel Bird, Blood, Snow in the context of the medieval Welsh prose romance Peredur Son of Efrog, part of the collection of medieval Welsh tales called the Mabinogion. The provenance of the original tale has been widely debated as it survives in four versions and has parallels both with French literature (most notably Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval) and native Welsh storytelling tradition. This article focuses on the visual insets present in the medieval tale and Jones’s text, and demonstrates that the complex network of intertextual relationships between the multiple versions of “Peredur,” along with the trends in the academic debate centred around it, is reflected in Jones’s novel by means of the compositional devices characterised by the oscillation between the verbal and the visual.

  • Issue Year: 68/2020
  • Issue No: 11
  • Page Range: 21-36
  • Page Count: 16
  • Language: English