A Double-Edged Sword: Feminist Reclamation in Neomedieval Fantasy
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Date
2023-03-24
Authors
Garner, Alexandra
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Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
Heroic fantasy produced by Anglophone creators overwhelmingly and often explicitly draws on western mythopoetic literary traditions. Just as products of the Renaissance and the Victorians before them, late 20th and 21st century cultural narratives romanticize and re-frame the past to serve the needs of their contemporary present. In this dissertation, I examine one conventional element of the cultural preoccupation with heroic neomedievalism: the sword. I first articulate how neomedievalism acts as a postmodern simulacrum not only of the actual historical past but also, more prominently, as an imagined and desired inheritance to one. English claims on the United States legally ended with the American Revolution, but cultural narratives of the U.S. continue to demonstrate desire for a shared legacy of British literary and cultural heroes.
I demonstrate how these continual concerns over legacy, lineage, and masculinity manifest in postmodern heroic fantasy as a double-edged sword. This is both literal and metaphorical: the subjects of neomedieval heroic fantasy conventions here are literal swords or sword-analogues; metaphorically, this sword’s edges embody myriad contradictions and tensions. Through close readings of the sword as a rhetorical, symbolic, and often queer object, I explore the desire for a claim to heroism in the style of King Arthur – aristocratic, male, able-bodied, and white – as it confronts ideological challenges associated with feminism, queerness, and racial/ethnic equality. I argue that the sword should thus be read as both an embodiment of and a challenge to traditionally phallocentric heroism.
In my explorations of neomedieval sword motifs in televisual heroic fantasy, children’s and young adult fiction, and the superhero film, I show how swords rhetorically function to offer cultural critiques that engage these tensions, especially those between neomedievalism and feminism. To accomplish this, I draw on medievalism studies, narrative and cultural theories, query theory, and feminist new materialism, among other approaches. This project contributes to conversations in popular culture studies, children’s and young adult literature, medieval studies, and critical whiteness studies. This dissertation includes previously published material.
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Keywords
children's and young adult literature, fantasy, feminism, medievalism, popular culture, sword