Abstract
This chapter explores the complex role of wonder in distinctions between historical truth and demonic fiction in late-medieval writings on the prophet and wonder worker Merlin, and his incubus father. It takes as its central point of enquiry the first two books of the Middle English Prose Merlin (concerning the prophet’s birth and childhood), which it approaches as the product of a long Latin and French Arthurian tradition. One of the earliest prose romances in England (three decades before Malory), the Prose Merlin survives in its fullest form in a single mid-fifteenth-century manuscript, Cambridge, University Library, MS Ff. 3. 11, and is dated roughly contemporary with this.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Medieval Perceptions of Magic, Science, and the Natural World |
| Editors | Carolina Escobar-Vargas , Anne Lawrence-Mathers |
| Publisher | Arc Humanities Press |
| Chapter | 12 |
| Pages | 193-206 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9781802702019 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781802700411 |
| Publication status | Published - Jul 2024 |