Celtic Myth in Contemporary Children's Fantasy; Note on Spelling and Dating; Acknowledgements; Contents; List of Figures; 1 Introduction: "Celticity," Fantasy, and the Child Readership; Fantasy: Tropes, Categories, Structure; Myth, Legend, Folktale, and their Relation to Fantasy: Reception and Adaptation; The Celts, Celticity, and "Celtic" Myth; Children's Literature, Celticity, and Ideology; Unravelling Celticity: The Structure of This Study; Notes; Part I Irish Myth; 2 Otherworldly Ireland: Pat O'Shea's The Hounds of the Mórrígan and Kate Thompson's The New Policeman Revisiting the Ancient Irish DeitiesIrish Landscape and Images of Celticity in Tír-na-nÓg; From Pagan "Gods" to Irish Folklore; Celtic Past and Christian Present -- Redux; Conclusions; Notes; 3 Celticity and the Irish Diaspora: Rewriting Finn mac Cumhall and Ćuchulain for American Youngsters; Mary Tannen's The Wizard Children of Finn; Mary Tannen's The Lost Legend of Finn; Henry Neff's The Tapestry Series; The Hero's Journeys of Max McDaniels and Ćuchulain; Irish Gods and Goddesses: Weaving a New Tapestry of Myth; Irishness, Celticity and the Material Culture of The Tapestry; Conclusion; Notes Part II Welsh Myth4 Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain: Building Fantasy upon Forgery; Prydain and Wales; Fantasy Templates: from "Welshifying" The Lord of the Rings to "Filling the Gaps" of Welsh Tradition; Prydain and the Counterfeit Tradition; Feisty Girls, Oracular Pigs, Evil Enchantresses, and Triple Goddesses; Conclusions; Notes; 5 Welsh Heritage for Teenagers: Alan Garner, Jenny Nimmo, Catherine Fisher; Alan Garner: The Owl Service; Jenny Nimmo: The Magician Trilogy; Catherine Fisher's Darkhenge; Conclusions; Notes 6 Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising Sequence and the Arthur of the WelshThe "Dark Ages" and a Celto-Roman Arthur; The Arthur of Welsh Legend and Folklore; Wales and Celticity: "Oldest Hills," Celtic Stereotypes, and Gravesian Interpretations; Conclusions; Notes; 7 Conclusion: Celticity and "Celtic" Heritage; (Re)Defining the "Celts," "Celtic" History, and "Celtic" Mythology; The "Celtic" Past as National/Cultural Heritage; The "Celtic" Character; Notes; Bibliography; Index
Summary:
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.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.