The Middle Ages in Children's Literature

From the Harry Potter series to urban fairy romance, the Middle Ages comprise a rich source of stories, symbols, characters and settings in texts for the young. The Middle Ages in Children's Literature is the first thorough study of medievalism for the young — that is, post-medieval imaginings of the Middle Ages in fiction, non-fiction and films.

In this book Clare Bradford shows that medievalism for the young both provides moments of enchantment and also serves as a distancing strategy which enables texts to address contentious and difficult topics. The Middle Ages in Children's Literature examines how changing conceptions of history have influenced the writing of historical fiction. Examining representations of disabilities, monstrous bodies, and animals, Bradford shows that medievalist texts use the medieval to reflect on modernity. The book ends with a chapter which explains why so many texts for the young treat the Middle Ages as a source of comedy.

Clare Bradford is Professor of Literary Studies at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. Her books include Reading Race: Aboriginality in Australian Children's Literature (2001), Unsettling Narratives: Postcolonial Readings of Children's Literature (2007), and New World Orders in Contemporary Children's Literature: Utopian Transformations (with Kerry Mallan, John Stephens and Robyn McCallum, 2001).

Introduction
1. Thinking about the Middle Ages
2. Temporality and the Medieval
3. Spatiality and the Medieval
4. Disabilities in Medievalist Fiction
5. Monstrous Bodies, Medievalist Inflexions
6. Medievalist Animals and their Humans
7. The Laughable Middle Ages
Notes
Bibliography
Index