Rewilding Myths in a Disenchanted World

In 2023, author Zoe Gilbert explained in an interview that “re-enchantment leads us to valuing what enchants us; we come to care, and to hope for the continuing existence of these things. […] By distinguishing between what enchants us and what simply distracts us, if we can identify sources of deep meaning, we will hopefully care about and protect the right things, and give less attention to the ones that do nothing for us and for the world.” Her statement, as well as her novel Mischief Acts, echoes a form of mythopoeic thinking that metamodern theorists have highlighted as characteristic of post-postmodern cultural sensitivities.

Metamodernism has as a central concept that the current (post-postmodern) structure of feeling—a collective, cultural undercurrent of a particular society in a specific sociopolitical context—is marked by an oscillation between opposing poles including elements characteristic of modernism and postmodernism such as irony, cynicism, and fragmentation on the one hand, and enthusiasm, sincerity, and hope on the other hand. This oscillation does not result in reconciliation between these opposites, or in an either-or logic, but rather in a both/and logic and renegotiation between seemingly contradictory poles. In this context, myth-like structures emerge as part of a Romantic turn; an attempt to re-enchant the world that moves away from postmodern deconstruction but does not uncritically return to grand narratives and instead grapples with the tension between grand narratives and skepticism. 

In a world riddled by multiple interweaving and overlapping crises and disenchanted by pure, anthropogenic reason, metamodern sensitivities are characterized by a search for meaning. As a result, the expressions they find in cultural productions continuously negotiate between hope and doubt, irony and sincerity, individualism and collectivism, unity and multiplicity, attempt and inevitable failure, and other opposites.  

Disenchantment and the uprooting of human beings from a world they previously had seen themselves and embodied and embedded part of alongside other intelligent—tangible and occult—life is entangled not only with a sense of fatigue but with the anthropogenic and extractivist logic that has given rise to widespread environmental destruction and the climate crisis. Myths and myth-making, then, serve as narrative frameworks to facilitate meaning-making. Instead of communicating some empirical truth, myths serve as grounds of exploration for emotional and symbolic truths, being well-suited to account for and engage with contradiction, ambiguity, and complexity. These metamodern myths are not static stories that signify a return to tradition but practices of creating shared imaginaries in an attempt to grapple with the current multiple crises and a longing for meaning.

Zoe Gilbert’s novel Mischief Acts (2022) and the movie The Green Knight (2021, directed by David Lowery) engage with the tensions between enchantment, disenchantment, and re-enchantment. Both stories create myths through process of reimagining —a rewilding of the myths they weave by treating them not as unchanging cultural heritage but as living rhizomatic fabric of sense-making that, in its messiness, conveys emotional truths corresponding to the current time and sociopolitical context of multiple crises and the cultural sensitivities that emerge from this.

Gilbert imagines the folkloric figure of Herne the Hunter across time through a narrative in which myth becomes both the subject of the story and the method to tell it. The myth, in this process, shifts and changes, morphing into different modes of being in each chapter from the first emergence of Herne in England’s medieval woodlands to future imaginaries. Likewise, in each chapter, Herne is reimagined in a different sociopolitical context, thus mirroring cultural anxieties and desires in a way that is both playful and sincere. Herne resists categorization, and instead, oscillates between different interpretations and functions as Mischief Acts thematizes wildness and civilization, freedom and responsibility. 

As much as Gilbert “rewilds” the myth of Herne the Hunter in a narrative that is less about a fixed path than about messy ambiguity and complexity across time, The Green Knight rewilds Arthurian myth by raveling the narrative’s chivalric fabric and exposing darker, more entangled strands. It does not demystify Gawain’s journey, nor does it uncritically immerse in it. Instead, the movie dips into the irrational and unknowable, ultimately leading to an ambiguous ending. Here, too, myth does not become imbued with monolithic meaning but functions as an open-ended terrain of exploration. 

Neither Mischief Acts nor The Green Knight uncritically embraces the familiar stories they work with. Neither Mischief Acts nor The Green Knight deconstructs and demystifies the myths they retell. The very structure of Gilbert’s novel taps into the theme of enchantment, disenchantment, and re-enchantment through respective divisions in the novel's structure. However, re-enchantment becomes interwoven with both awe and wonder, and critical awareness and reflexivity, much more than it signifies a naïve return to enchantment. Similarly, The Green Knight reimagines the hero’s arc so that Gawain’s journey leads to reckoning rather than triumph. It thereby reimagines and continues the story with a sincerity towards its mythic character, yet without naïveté: It is a re-enchantment that remains critically aware through the darkness and ambiguity that are revealed in the fabric of the myth. Both Mischief Acts and The Green Knight make use of non-linearity and transformation; in both, nature is not merely a scenic backdrop but possesses agency. More-than-human life and mythical forces interact with humans. Through these rewildings, both stories do more than merely create a sense of enchantment by introducing the more-than-human to an anthropogenic view of the world, and by accounting for ambiguity and complexity in a way that leaves room for both a search for meaning and critical reflection.

Written by Merle Emrich.

Cover image by Bruno Kelzer.