Conclusion

Abstract

The one fairy realm of potential wish-fulfillment not discussed in the previous chapter is Avalon. Of all such realms it may be the most idealized, the most straightforwardly rewarding, but like so many other supernatural realms of both fairy mistresses and enchantresses, there still remains a tension in its idleness and separateness. Such tension remains not because it is in any way a realm of potential entrapment, but because its reward is based on the supernatural extension of life, and therefore, its idealization is predicated on the possibility of return to the human world. The Avalon motif, indeed, shows precisely why departure to the fairy realm marks the end of narrative action, but in this case such an end is idealized through the close proximity between Arthurian romance and history, for the rewarding potentiality of Avalon is always suspended beyond the end of the text, and beyond history itself.¹ In romances not aligned with the simulacra of actual-world folklore, however, since the simultaneity of the narrative’s end and the permanent departure from the human world is a narratological inevitability, some authors had to be inventive to construct an intra-world logic—perhaps best understood as an illogic—that would allow for the continuation of their heroes’ careers beyond a first meeting in the Otherworld.