NISN: Nordic Irish Studies Network

Description

Theme: The Popular in Irish Culture: My paper: The fantasy TV series Lost Girl is a Canadian production, starring almost exclusively Canadian actors and scripted by mainly Canadian writers, although the show’s creator and first season show-runner is an American (Michelle Lovretta). Yet the show consistently picks Irish-inspired mythologies, settings and character archetypes as its story-propellant vehicles. Why is this, one might wonder? What is it about Irish folklore and mythology that inspires so powerfully that almost all the central supernatural characters (Fay) in the show can be traced to Irish roots, or simply flaunt their ‘Irishness’ as part of the character dynamics of their plot arcs? Examples include “The Morrigan” being the professional epithet for the main adversary (Dark Fay) of the plot; a Banshee becoming a major plot trigger in an early episode; the wise old savior-type protagonist (a.k.a. as the Blood King) bearing an Irish name, Fitzpatrick McCorrigan, although he is affectionately known to all as “Trick”; and his bar sharing the name the Dál Riata with an Irish/Scottish over-kingdom of the 6th and 7th Century. This paper aims to discuss the pull and attraction of Irish mythology, story-telling, folklore and music as what approximates a lingua franca imagology of the Fay, exemplified by analyses of fragments of the image world of Lost Girl.

Period	7 May 2014 - 9 May 2014
Event type	Conference
Location	Aalborg, Denmark