Inside Merlin's Cave
A Cornish Arthurian Reader 1000–2000
Edited by Amy Hale, Alan M. Kent and Tim Saunders
Francis Boutle Publishers
ISBN 1 903427 04 5
Paperback 253 pages 4 illustrations in black and white
Price per copy including postage: UK £12.50 Worldwide £15
The book
Inside Merlin's Cave brings King Arthur back to Cornwall. Selections from Geoffrey of Monmouth, Malory's Morte D'Arthur, Tennyson's Idylls of the King and A S Smith's Cornish-language masterpiece Trystan hag Ysolt (Tristan and Isolt), as well as numerous poems, commentaries, prophecies and plays, including the full text of Thomas Hardy's Queen of Cornwall, establish Cornwall not just as the birthplace of Arthur but as a source of all Arthurian themes.
Three important essays by the editors discuss the development of the Arthurian myth, not least through tourism and the heritage industry, its use in popular culture, as in George Lucas' film Star Wars, and it impact on Cornish literature and culture over a thousand years.
The editors
Amy Hale is lecturer in Contemporary Celtic Studies at the Institute of Cornish Studies. in 1998 she was awarded a doctorate for her research into Celtic identities in Cornwall. Recent publications have included chapters in Celtic Geographies and Cornish Studies as well as reviews for Folklore. She is co-editor of New Directions in Celtic Studies.
Alan M Kent was born in St Austell and grew up in the china clay mining region of mid-Cornwall. He is a poet, novelist and dramatist. In 1998 he was awarded a doctorate for his research into Cornish, Cornu-English and Anglo-Cornish literature. He has recently completed a new verse adaptation of the Cornish mystery play trilogy known as Ordinalia.
Tim Saunders is one of the leading poets writing in Cornish today. He is the author of poetry and jounalism in Welsh, Irish and Breton as well as Cornish and he is the editor of The Wheel –an anthology of modern poetry in Cornish 1850–1980. He is a bard of the Cornish Gorseth.
Free teaching aids based on this book
See our teaching aids section for free programmes of study based on this book for Advanced Level.
