Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain: Building Fantasy upon Forgery

Chapter 4 examines Lloyd Alexander’s series The Chronicles of Prydain (The Book of Three, 1964, The Black Cauldron, 1965, The Castle of Llyr, 1966, Taran Wanderer, 1967, and The High King, 1968). The chapter focuses on ideas of interpretation and authenticity when adapting the wider Welsh tradition (from the Mabinogion to the Welsh Triads and the legend of Taliesin) for a child readership. Alexander’s books take place in a secondary world, for which Wales is the blueprint, and the chapter discusses how they blend disparate ideas about the “Celtic” past with often-contested interpretations of the medieval Welsh material.