Survivor motifs and the flavour of myth: Marvel’s medievalist Thor
| dc.contributor.advisor | Birkett, Thomas | |
| dc.contributor.advisor | Semple, Edel | |
| dc.contributor.author | Fylan, Kevin | en |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-05-25T09:42:29Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2026-05-25T09:42:29Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2025-12-31 | en |
| dc.date.submitted | 2025-12-31 | |
| dc.description.abstract | The research here presented examines the survival and transformation of Old Norse myth within the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), exploring how a twenty-first-century film and TV franchise of unprecedented scale and success continues to evoke what J. R. R. Tolkien called the ‘flavour of myth’, despite the radical changes of medium, tone, and cultural context. Through close analysis of the Thor films (2011–22), the Avengers ensemble films (2012–2019), and the Loki television series (2021–23), and comparison with Old Norse sources, nineteenth- and twentieth-century retellings, and Marvel comics, the study situates the MCU within the reception history of Old Norse myth in English-language culture. To trace chains of transmission, it adopts a heuristic derived from Actor-Network Theory (ANT), mapping the textual, cultural, industry, and creative forces that together shape adaptation. This framework enables the identification of ‘survivor motifs’ – echoes of the Poetic Edda and Prose Edda, captured in thirteenth-century Iceland, that re-emerge in the MCU despite being downplayed or absent from popular receptions, Marvel Comics, and even some scholarly interpretations. Where the persistence or resurfacing of such motifs proves difficult to account for within the ANT model, analysis suggests that these recurrent motifs endure because they are dramatically effective. If so, Tolkien’s elusive ‘flavour of myth’ may, in the case of the Old Norse material, be understood as the faint but persistent trace of performance itself – a quality that links the myths that have survived in written form not only to their twenty-first-century revivals in the MCU, but also to performative and perhaps even dramatic origins. Alongside this, the thesis considers whether that the MCU’s freedom from the constraints of direct retelling – and its commitment to long-form, open-ended storytelling – has created conditions in which such motifs can resurface without the pressure to reproduce specific plots. Rather than preserving the myths, this mode of adaptation allows aspects of character, tone, and world-building that were often muted or reshaped in post-medieval transmission to re-emerge in new configurations. In its final chapters, the thesis considers what these findings may reveal about the myths in their earlier forms: how they functioned in performance, why certain gestures and themes proved so resilient, and whether this perspective might invite a reassessment of long-held assumptions about the Eddic poems and stories. | |
| dc.description.status | Not peer reviewed | en |
| dc.description.version | Accepted Version | en |
| dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | en |
| dc.identifier.citation | Fylan, K. 2025. Survivor motifs and the flavour of myth: Marvel’s medievalist Thor. PhD Thesis, University College Cork. | |
| dc.identifier.endpage | 304 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/10468/18853 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | en |
| dc.publisher | University College Cork | en |
| dc.rights | © 2025, Kevin Fylan. | |
| dc.rights.uri | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ | |
| dc.subject | Old Norse | |
| dc.subject | Medievalism | |
| dc.subject | Marvel | |
| dc.subject | Film and television | |
| dc.subject | Adaptation | |
| dc.subject | Mythology | |
| dc.subject | Popular culture | |
| dc.title | Survivor motifs and the flavour of myth: Marvel’s medievalist Thor | en |
| dc.type | Doctoral thesis | en |
| dc.type.qualificationlevel | Doctoral | en |
| dc.type.qualificationname | PhD - Doctor of Philosophy | en |
