Overview
- Offers fresh perspectives on Celtic studies by considering recent critical discussion of the term "Celtic"
- Covers a range of material, spanning classic children’s books to contemporary fantasy authors such as Kate Thompson and Catherine Fisher
- Examines in depth the appropriation and adaptation of Celtic myth and folklore
Part of the book series: Critical Approaches to Children's Literature (CRACL)
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Table of contents (7 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
Runner-up of the Katherine Briggs Folklore Award 2017
Winner of the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Myth & Fantasy Studies 2019
This book examines the creative uses of “Celtic” myth in contemporary fantasy written for children or young adults from the 1960s to the 2000s. Its scope ranges from classic children’s fantasies such as Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain and Alan Garner’s The Owl Service, to some of the most recent, award-winning fantasy authors of the last decade, such as Kate Thompson (The New Policeman) and Catherine Fisher (Darkhenge). The book focuses on the ways these fantasy works have appropriated and adapted Irish and Welsh medieval literature in order to highlight different perceptions of “Celticity.” The term “Celtic” itself is interrogated in light of recent debates in Celtic studies, in order to explore a fictional representation of a national past that is often romanticized and political.
Reviews
“Like the characters with whom it deals, this book walks between worlds, in this case those of medieval Irish and Welsh literature, of modern romantic Celticists, and of fiction produced for young adults. It does so with a remarkable knowledge of each, producing a host of new insights.” (Ronald Hutton, Professor of History, University of Bristol, UK)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Dimitra Fimi is Senior Lecturer in English at Cardiff Metropolitan University, Wales, UK. Her monograph Tolkien, Race and Cultural History won the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inklings Studies. She is co-editor A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Invented Languages. She lectures on fantasy, children’s literature, and medievalism.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Celtic Myth in Contemporary Children’s Fantasy
Book Subtitle: Idealization, Identity, Ideology
Authors: Dimitra Fimi
Series Title: Critical Approaches to Children's Literature
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55282-2
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan London
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-137-55281-5Published: 10 March 2017
eBook ISBN: 978-1-137-55282-2Published: 06 March 2017
Series ISSN: 2753-0825
Series E-ISSN: 2753-0833
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIII, 305
Number of Illustrations: 11 b/w illustrations
Topics: Children's Literature, Contemporary Literature, Literary History