Medievalism and the Fantasy Heroine

This essay aligns the narrative trajectories of a selected group of contemporary fantasy novels with various medieval sources, with an emphasis on the enduring cultural fantasy of the strong woman who rises above a general condition of female disenfranchisement. The article examines female exceptionalism as a source of narrative pleasure and considers the impact and significance of the insertion of feminist critiques into familiar story-lines. The article also considers the difficulties and delights of attempting to create a flexible language for female heroism in a series of ostensibly medieval contexts. While the reliance of the fantasy market on medieval motifs – its reliance on medievalism, to be more precise – is not news, there remain a few thoughts to be articulated about the means by which so many popular female protagonists continue to have staying power and high market value within particular systems of power, systems familiar to the medievalist even when decontextualized, displaced and relocated elsewhere in the space–time continuum of the imagination.