The Middle Ages in Children's Literature

by C. Bradford

Overview

Children grow up surrounded by stories, motifs, characters and themes which respond to the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages in Children's Literature explores the use and abuse of the medieval in children's literature, the many forms in which it appears, and its enduring capacity to enchant the young.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781137035387
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	01/16/2015
Series:	Critical Approaches to Children's Literature
Edition description:	2015
Pages:	209
Product dimensions:	5.43(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.03(d)

About the Author

Clare Bradford is Professor of Literary Studies at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. Her books include Reading Race: Aboriginality in Australian Children's Literature (2001), Unsettling Narratives: Postcolonial Readings of Children's Literature (2007), and New World Orders in Contemporary Children's Literature: Utopian Transformations (with Kerry Mallan, John Stephens and Robyn McCallum, 2008).

Table of Contents

Introduction 1. Thinking about the Middle Ages 2. Temporality and the Medieval 3. Spatiality and the Medieval 4. Disabilities in Medievalist Fiction 5. Monstrous Bodies, Medievalist Inflexions 6. Medievalist Animals and their Humans 7. The Laughable Middle Ages Notes Bibliography Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

'Clare Bradford's The Middle Ages in Children's Literature powerfully intervenes in the joint fields of medievalism and children's literature, exploring their mutual points of interest in recreating the historical past, as well as the present children who consume these fanciful renderings of times long gone by. Lucidly written and wonderfully detailed, Bradford's study promises that readers will never see the Middle Ages or children's literature with quite the same innocent eyes.' - Professor Tison Pugh, University of Central Florida, USA

Editorial Reviews

In The Middle Ages in Children’s Literature, Clare Bradford analyzes how the Middle Ages is depicted in children’s literature … . the broad and impressive scope of her work shows the exciting ways that critical theory can help enrich the scholarship in children’s literature. … offer readers not only a world of enchantment, but also a way to confront contemporary social questions in a space distant from the present in the present past.” (Johanna Denzin, The Lion and the Unicorn, Vol. 40 (3), September, 2016)

“With admirable economy, Bradford covers a great deal of theoretical ground, applying to children’s literature ideas about temporality, spatiality, and the monstrous, as well as concepts drawn from disability studies, animal studies, and humor theory. … Full of useful insights, the book will be of much more value to those interested in Contemporary critical theory than to readers who want to know about the Middle Ages in children’s literature.” (Rebecca Barnhouse, Children's Literature Association Quarterly, Vol. 42, (4),2014)

From the Publisher