Everyone knows Merlin, King Arthur’s enchanter. This lecture makes the case that we do not know the Celtic figure who lies behind him nearly so well. He appears in medieval texts not as a wizard but as a Wildman, a forest-dwelling prophet, driven mad during a battle. Various sources in Irish, Welsh,and Latin allow us to reconstruct with some confidence a powerful lost tale native to these islands, which we might call ‘The Madman of the Caledonian Forest’. In this lost tale, insanity, intuitive insight, and the flight from civilisation are major themes, and Mark will suggest ways in which its narrative can be read psychologically in the light of a Jungian understanding of trauma, dissociation, and PTSD.
The Celtic Merlin, Warfare, Vision and Madness
About this event
Speaker
Speaker
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Mark Williams
Organiser
