The Representation of Merlin in Álvaro Cunqueiro’s 'Merlín e familia'
Abstract
Merlin’s symbolic enrichment achieves such a significance throughout the Arthurian cycle and its medieval stage as to encourage several intertextual transpositions in subsequent narrative structures, reaching our present days, full of literary richness and consequence. A meaningful example arises in Álvaro Cunqueiro’s novel Merlín e familia (1955), the subject of study of this article. Cunqueiro develops the story from the desire to scape reality and seek refuge in the myths and legends of yesteryear. Cunqueiro interconnects these legendary elements through rewriting them into the creation of a new reality. This rework of Merlin has several characteristic traits and roles selected from the medieval figure; nonetheless, he loses altogether other of his original facets, generating a complex Merlin in which the traditional and the modern unite.
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