Coming Soon: Beowulf as Children’s Literature edited by Gilcrest and Mize

Beowulf as Children’s Literature

Edited by Bruce Gilchrist and Britt Mize

Available: November 2021

Full details at https://utorontopress.com/9781487502706/beowulf-as-children-and-x2019s-literature/.

PRODUCT DETAILS

Hardcover

$80.00

ISBN: 9781487502706

Not Yet Published

Pre-Order Now

Imprint: University of Toronto Press

Page Count: 328 Pages

Illustrations: 27 b&w illustrations

Dimensions: 6.00 x 9.00

World Rights

DESCRIPTION:

The single largest category of Beowulf representation and adaptation, outside of direct translation of the poem, is children’s literature. Over the past century and a half, more than 150 new versions of Beowulf directed to child and teen audiences have appeared, in English and in many other languages. In this collection of original essays, Bruce Gilchrist and Britt Mize examine the history and processes of remaking Beowulf for young readers.

Inventive in their manipulations of story, tone, and genre, these adaptations require their authors to make countless decisions about what to include, exclude, emphasize, de-emphasize, and adjust. This volume considers the many forms of children’s literature, focusing primarily on picture books, illustrated storybooks, and youth novels, but taking account also of curricular aids, illustrated full translations of the poem, and songs. Contributors address issues of gender, historical context, war and violence, techniques of narration, education, and nationalism, investigating both the historical and theoretical dimensions of bringing Beowulf to child audiences.

CONTENTS

Introduction: Beowulf in and near Children’s Literature

Britt Mize

1. “A Little Shared Homer for England and the North”: The First Beowulf for Young Readers

Mark Bradshaw Busbee

2. The Adaptational Character of the Earliest Beowulf for English Children: E.L. Hervey’s “The Fight with the Ogre”

Renée Ward

3. Visualizing Femininity in Children’s and Illustrated Versions of Beowulf

Bruce Gilchrist

4. Tolkien, Beowulf, and Faërie: Adaptations for Readers Aged “Six to Sixty”

Amber Dunai

5. Treatments of Beowulf as a Source in Mid-Twentieth-Century Children’s Literature

Carl Edlund Anderson

6. What We See in the Grendel Cave: Focalization in Beowulf for Children

Janet Schrunk Ericksen

7. Beowulf, Bèi’àowǔfǔ, and the Social Hero

Britt Mize

8. The Monsters and the Animals: Theriocentric Beowulfs

Robert Stanton

9. Children’s Beowulfs for the New Tolkien Generation

Yvette Kisor

10. The Practice of Adapting Beowulf for Younger Readers: A Conversation with Rebecca Barnhouse and James Rumford

Britt Mize

11. Children’s Versions of Beowulf: A Bibliography

Bruce Gilchrist

EDITORS

Bruce Gilchrist is a professor in the Department of English at John Abbot College.

Britt Mize is an associate professor in the Department of English at Texas A&M University.