When did wizards start living in towers?
- Thread starter Huw
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Mean Eyed Cat
Explorer
Doing more internet research, I came up with a few more likely theories for the “wizard in the tower” origin. While the Arthurian legends never indicate that Merlin lived in a tower, there is the story [Geoffrey of Monmouth 171] about Merlin as a boy:
“[Merlin] is the magical child who is kidnapped by Vortigern with the intention of sacrificing him to sanctify the tower he is building. The tower keeps falling and it is Merlin who reveals the reason for this in a prophetic vision that starts his career as a seer.”
It seems that C.G. Jung liked to use various folktales to describe symbolism and archetypes. He was known to have used some of the Arthurian legends and even the story of Merlin above for this purpose. In 1922, he started construction on a stone tower built with his own hands near Zurich. He called it a “representation in stone of my innermost thoughts and of the knowledge I had acquired... a confession of faith in stone."
He carved a large stone and placed it outside the tower and chiseled "Le cri de Merlin!" into the back face of the stone. It reminded him of Merlin's life in the forest, after he had vanished from the world.
“[Merlin] is the magical child who is kidnapped by Vortigern with the intention of sacrificing him to sanctify the tower he is building. The tower keeps falling and it is Merlin who reveals the reason for this in a prophetic vision that starts his career as a seer.”
It seems that C.G. Jung liked to use various folktales to describe symbolism and archetypes. He was known to have used some of the Arthurian legends and even the story of Merlin above for this purpose. In 1922, he started construction on a stone tower built with his own hands near Zurich. He called it a “representation in stone of my innermost thoughts and of the knowledge I had acquired... a confession of faith in stone."
He carved a large stone and placed it outside the tower and chiseled "Le cri de Merlin!" into the back face of the stone. It reminded him of Merlin's life in the forest, after he had vanished from the world.
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Mean Eyed Cat
Explorer
Huw said:
Robert E. Howard wrote "The Tower of the Elephant" in 1933. In the story, it describes a jewel that is "kept in an eponymous tower by an evil sorcerer named Yara."
Wombat
First Post
Gak! I forgot about this thread!
Okay, I'm going to come back with some titles of works as soon as I can, but I can say definitively that by the time Orlando Furioso was written (c. 1520), the trope of "wizard in a tower" was already well established, as this book takes several digs at such conventions.
Okay, I'm going to come back with some titles of works as soon as I can, but I can say definitively that by the time Orlando Furioso was written (c. 1520), the trope of "wizard in a tower" was already well established, as this book takes several digs at such conventions.
Huw
First Post
Wombat said:
Thanks! Once again, Gutenberg delivers, but unfortunately the English translation is a bit of a mess and my Italian is quite rough. Nonetheless I see what you mean - Atlante is definitely a wizard who lives in a tower (and uses it as a prison).
Any advance on 1520 then?
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