"Very capital reading for children": Reading as Play in Hawthorne's A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys

Since Nathaniel Hawthorne's pioneering A Wonder Book for Boys and Girls (1851) and Tanglewood Tales (1853), retelling Greek and Roman myths for children has been a widespread and influential means of popularizing classical material. While Hawthorne unabashedly appropriated the myths as entertainment for young readers, works by his contemporary counterparts (such as the "Myth-O-Mania" series,Greece! Rome! Monsters! , and the Percy Jackson series) display a more anxious and conflicted approach to the same material, caught between the aims of educating their readers about antiquity and appealing to their readers' presumed hostility to school and learning. One area in which the classical tradition is currently most alive and popular is in works of children's literature inspired by mythology. Disciplines Arts and Humanities | Classics

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Metaphor and Intertextuality: A Cognitive Approach to Intertextual Meaning-Making in Metafictional Fantasy Novels

Shonoda¹

2012

Intl Research in Children's Literature

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Scholars in children's literature have frequently commented on the humorous and ideological functions of intertextuality. There has however, been little discussion of the cognitive processes at work in intertextual interpretation and how they provide readers with more interpretive freedom in the meaning-making process. Drawing on research from the field of metaphor studies and the interdisciplinary area of cognitive poetics, this article suggests that the interpretation of foregrounded intertextuality is analogous to the interpretation of metaphoric expression. Current models of metaphor interpretation are discussed before I outline my own intertextuality-based variant. The cross-mapping model developed is then applied to literary intertexts in Inkheart and cultural intertexts in Starcross in order to show how the model might work with intertexts of varying degrees of specificity and that serve different narrative functions. The explanatory power of the cross-mapping model is not limited to cases where elements in the primary storyworld can be directly matched with those in the intertext, but extends to instances that involve a recasting of the intertext and thus retelling as in Princess Bride.

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"Very capital reading for children": Reading as Play in Hawthorne's A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys

Cited by 3 publications

References 12 publications

Myth Collections for Children

Myth Collections for Children

Classics for Cool Kids: Popular and Unpopular Versions of Antiquity for Children

Metaphor and Intertextuality: A Cognitive Approach to Intertextual Meaning-Making in Metafictional Fantasy Novels

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