![]() In Apollonius of Rhodes’s Argonautica, in Theocritus’s pastoral poem “Hylas” ( Idyll XIII), and in Valerius Flaccus’s Argonautica, Heracles goes off in search of his lost squire, Hylas, who was abducted by a water nymph at Mysia. Merlin is another wholly supernatural figure, yet not demonic. ![]() Out of the extinguishment of his two parental origins a third category emerges. Merlin, however, is revealed as neither demon nor human. Her use of magic means she can be nothing else. In contrast to her sons who are accepted by the group as fully human, Melusine is revealed as fully faery. Although comparable in many respects, the hybridities of Merlin and Melusine are extinguished differently. While neither can escape the negative influence of their supernatural parent whom they much resemble, nonetheless the influence of their human parent is also considerable. While they possess elements of the human, both end up outside the human paradigm, hybridity extinguishing itself to reveal what these characters truly have been all along. ![]() ![]() In the medieval literary tradition, Merlin is the son of a human mother and a demon father, while Melusine is the daughter of a human father and a faery mother. This chapter discusses hybridity as an intersection of supernaturality, gender, and parental influence in a comparison of the cases of Merlin and Melusine. ![]()
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