Classical Reception and Children's Literature: Greece, Rome and Childhood Transformation

Description

Reception studies have transformed the classics. Many more literary and cultural texts are now regarded as 'valid' for classical study. And within this process of widening, children's literature has in its turn emerged as being increasingly important. Books written for children now comprise one of the largest and most prominent bodies of texts to engage with the classical world, with an audience that constantly changes as it grows up. This innovative volume wrestles with that very characteristic of change which is so fundamental to children's literature, showing how significant the classics, as well as classically-inspired fiction and verse, have been in tackling the adolescent challenges posed by metamorphosis. Chapters address such themes as the use made by C S Lewis, in The Horse and his Boy, of Apuleius' The Golden Ass; how Ovidian myth frames the Narnia stories; classical 'nonsense' in Edward Lear; Pan as a powerful symbol of change in children's literature, for instance in The Wind in the Willows; the transformative power of the Orpheus myth; and how works for children have handled the teaching of the classics. Cover Author Biography Title Copyright Dedication Contents List of Figures List of Contributors Introduction 1. Beyond the World: Gossip, Murder, and the Legend of Orpheus 2. Interview with Michael Cadnum 3. Michael Cadnum’s Metamorphoses of Ovid Part I Changing Times 4. Aesop the Morphing Fabulist 5. Perspective Matters: Roman Britain in Children’s Novels Part II Myths of Change 6. The Paradox of Pan as a Figure of Regeneration in Children’s Literature 7. Arachne’s Web: the Reception of an Ovidian Myth in Works for Children 8. Narcissus in Children’s Contexts: Didacticism and Scopophilia? Part III Didactic Classics 9. ‘I’d break the slate and scream for joy if I did Latin like a boy!’: Studying and Teaching Classics in Girls’ and Boys’ Fiction 10. Latin, Greek, and Other Classical ‘Nonsense’ in the Work of Edward Lear 11. Changing Alexandria: Didactic Plots and Roman Detectives in Caroline Lawrence and Lindsey Davis Part IV Narnia and Metamorphoses 12. Ovid Misunderstood: The Metamorphoses in Narnia 13. The Horse, the Ass, and their Boys: C. S. Lewis and the Ending of Apuleius’s Golden Ass Afterword: Inheriting the Past: Children’s Voices and Parenting Experiences Bibliography Index Back Cover