Topologies of the Classical World in Children's Fiction: Palimpsests, Maps, and Fractals (Classical Presences)

Beginning with Rudyard Kipling and Edith Nesbit and concluding with best-selling series still ongoing at the time of writing, this volume examines works of twentieth- and twenty-first-century children's literature that incorporate character types, settings, and narratives derived from the Greco-Roman past. Drawing on a cognitive poetics approach to reception studies, it argues that authors typically employ a limited and powerful set of spatial metaphors - palimpsest, map, and fractal - to organize the classical past for preteen and adolescent readers. Palimpsest texts see the past as a collection of strata in which each new era forms a layer superimposed upon a foundation laid earlier; map texts use the metaphor of the mappable journey to represent a protagonist's process of maturing while gaining knowledge of the self and/or the world; fractal texts, in which small parts of the narrative are thematically identical to the whole, present the past in a way that implies that history is infinitely repeatable. While a given text may embrace multiple metaphors in presenting the past, associations between dominant metaphors, genre, and outlook emerge from the case studies examined in each chapter, revealing remarkable thematic continuities in how the past is represented and how agency is attributed to protagonists: each model, it is suggested, uses the classical past to urge and thus perhaps to develop a particular approach to life. Cover 1 Topologies of the Classical World in Children’s Fiction: Palimpsests, Maps, and Fractals 4 Copyright 5 Acknowledgments 6 Copyright Acknowledgments 8 Contents 10 List of Illustrations 12 1: Introduction 14 1.1 The Models 19 1.2 Sample Exception #1: Mirroring in Echo Echo 24 1.3 Sample Exception #2: Insides and Outsides in Bull 27 1.4 Sample Exception #3: Curves vs. Straight Lines in The Mark of the Horse Lord 31 1.5 Conclusion 35 2: HISTORY IS A PALIMPSEST 1: The Layers of Ancient Rome in Puck of Pook’s Hill and Its Successors 36 2.1 Foundations: Puck of Pook’s Hill 38 2.2 Layers for Adults: Three Fantasies 43 2.3 Layers for Children: Three Fantasies 55 2.4 Beyond Fantasy: Philip Turner’s Yorkshire Palimpsest 63 2.5 Conclusion 66 3: HISTORY IS A PALIMPSEST 2: Time Zones, Scars, and Family in (Mostly) Realistic Works 68 3.1 Magical Rules and Classical Tradition in The Enchanted Castle 71 3.2 Liminality and Mixed Metaphors in Three Novels by Caroline Dale Snedeker 77 3.3 Trauma, Family, and History in The Bronze Bow 92 3.4 Wounding in The Eagle of the Ninth 97 3.5 Conclusion 104 4: HISTORY IS A MAP 1: Navigating the Underworld 107 4.1 A Map Text Without a Map: The Story of the Amulet 111 4.2 Underworlds and (Platonic) Caves in The Silver Chair 118 4.3 Underworlds and Returns in Mystery at Mycenae and The Roman Mysteries 124 4.4 Symbolic Underworlds and Shifting Scripts in the Roman Pony Trilogy 137 4.5 Mapping the Orpheus Myth in the Jack Perdu Books and the Underworlds Series 144 4.6 Conclusion 155 5: HISTORY IS A MAP 2: Carnivals, Grotesquerie, and the Antic(que) Map Text 157 5.1 Gryllus the Pig and the Playful Attack on Borders 161 5.2 Spartapuss the Cat and the Repeating and Consuming of Time 169 5.3 Julius Zebra and Cognitive Connection through Words, Pictures, and Warthogs 173 5.4 The Dogs of Pompeii and Popular Culture’s Alliance with the Past 178 5.5 Percy Jackson and the Apotheosis of the Comic Didactic 186 5.6 Conclusion 199 6: HISTORY IS FRACTAL: Patterns of Conflict in Contemporary Young Adult Fantasies 200 6.1 Despairing Didacticism: Learning and Misery in Red Shift 205 6.2 Separate Spheres and If Worlds: Culture Clash in the Fireball and Warriors Trilogies 213 6.3 Panem et Circenses: Countries, Cats, and Conflict in the Hunger Games Trilogy 220 6.4 Monsters and Masks: Trust and Treachery in the Ember in the Ashes Series 231 6.5 Secret Keepers: Manipulating Misprision in The Queen’s Thief Sequence 239 6.6 Conclusion 249 7: Conclusion 252 Works Cited 262 Index 276 Beginning with Rudyard Kipling and Edith Nesbit and concluding with best-selling series still ongoing at the time of writing, this volume examines works of twentieth- and twenty-first-century children's literature that incorporate character types, settings, and narratives derived from the Greco-Roman past. Drawing on a cognitive poetics approach to reception studies, it argues that authors typically employ a limited and powerful set of spatial metaphors - palimpsest, map, and fractal - to organize the classical past for preteen and adolescent readers. Palimpsest texts see the past as a collection of strata in which each new era forms a layer superimposed upon a foundation laid earlier; map texts use the metaphor of the mappable journey to represent a protagonist's process of maturing while gaining knowledge of the self and/or the world; fractal texts, in which small parts of the narrative are thematically identical to the whole, present the past in a way that implies that history is infinitely repeatable. While a given text may embrace multiple metaphors in presenting the past, associations between dominant metaphors, genre, and outlook emerge from the case studies examined in each chapter, revealing remarkable thematic continuities in how0the past is represented and how agency is attributed to protagonists: each model, it is suggested, uses the classical past to urge and thus perhaps to develop a particular approach to life