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Welsh Mythology and Folklore in Popular Culture: Essays on Adaptations in Literature, Film, Television, and Digital Media Eds. Audrey L. Becker and Kristin Noone McFarland: Jefferson NC, 2011. 224 pages. Paperback
The best essay collections are more than just the sum of their parts. Audrey L. Becker and Kristin Noone succeed in crafting such a collection in their Welsh Mythology and Folklore in Popular Culture. Individually the essays examine contemporary critical questions including representations of the feminine voice, colonial influence, and the role of interactive digital environments in sustaining cultural artifacts. Taken as a whole, however, the collection asks a broader question: can popular culture revitalize the modern imagination in such a way that "Welsh myth [can function] as a powerful force for enabling commonality across boundaries of time and space" (4). At stake for Becker and Noone is the question of adaptation as a form of cultural translation, and whether or not it is capable, as a practice, of linking us to the estranged.
It is particularly fitting that this question should be asked in the specific context of Welsh mythology, for "Wales itself occupies a special place among mythological, and fantastical, realms" as a land with a dual identitywhat C.W....