Book Section
Monika Otter
Merlin’s Open Mind
Madness, Prophecy, and Poetry in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Vita Merlini
This essay considers the observatory in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Vita Merlini, with its seventy doors and seventy windows, as a structuring emblem of the title character’s state of mind and, by extension, the poem’s poetics and epistemology.
Keywords: Merlin; prophecy; madness; mental illness; Tristan; shelter; observatory; allegory
| Title |
Merlin’s Open Mind
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| Subtitle |
Madness, Prophecy, and Poetry in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Vita Merlini
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| Author(s) |
Monika Otter
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| Identifier | |
| Description |
This essay considers the observatory in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Vita Merlini, with its seventy doors and seventy windows, as a structuring emblem of the title character’s state of mind and, by extension, the poem’s poetics and epistemology.
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| Is Part Of | |
| Place |
Berlin
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| Publisher |
ICI Berlin Press
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| Date |
19 April 2022
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| Subject |
Merlin
prophecy
madness
mental illness
Tristan
shelter
observatory
allegory
|
| Rights |
© by the author(s)
Except for images or otherwise noted, this publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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| Language |
en-GB
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| page start |
127
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| page end |
143
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| Source |
Openness in Medieval Europe, ed. by Manuele Gragnolati and Almut Suerbaum, Cultural Inquiry, 23 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2022), pp. 127–43
|
References
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Cite as:
Monika Otter, ‘Merlin’s Open Mind: Madness, Prophecy, and Poetry in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Vita Merlini’, in Openness in Medieval Europe, ed. by Manuele Gragnolati and Almut Suerbaum, Cultural Inquiry, 23 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2022), pp. 127-43 <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-23_07>