Claudia Nelson and Anne Morey
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- November 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198846031
- eISBN:
- 9780191881268
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198846031.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This book draws upon cognitive poetics and uses an assortment of works written in Britain and the US for preteen and adolescent readers from 1906 to 2018 to argue that authors typically employ a ...
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This book draws upon cognitive poetics and uses an assortment of works written in Britain and the US for preteen and adolescent readers from 1906 to 2018 to argue that authors typically employ a limited and powerful set of spatial metaphors to organize the classical past for young readers. Popular models include palimpsest texts, which see the past as a collection of strata in which each new era forms a layer superimposed upon a foundation laid earlier; map texts, which 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; and fractal texts, in which small parts of the narrative are thematically identical to the whole in a way that implies that history is infinitely repeatable. While a given text may embrace multiple metaphors in presenting the past, we argue for associations between dominant metaphors, genre, and outlook. Map texts highlight problem-solving and arrival at one’s planned destination; they model an assertive, confident outlook. Palimpsest texts position character and reader as occupying one among many equally important temporal layers; they emphasize the landscape’s continuity but the individual’s impermanence, modeling a more modest vision of one’s place in time. Fractal texts work by analogy, denying difference between past and present and inviting readers to conclude that significant change may be impossible. Thus each model uses the classical past to urge and thus perhaps to develop a particular approach to life.Less
This book draws upon cognitive poetics and uses an assortment of works written in Britain and the US for preteen and adolescent readers from 1906 to 2018 to argue that authors typically employ a limited and powerful set of spatial metaphors to organize the classical past for young readers. Popular models include palimpsest texts, which see the past as a collection of strata in which each new era forms a layer superimposed upon a foundation laid earlier; map texts, which 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; and fractal texts, in which small parts of the narrative are thematically identical to the whole in a way that implies that history is infinitely repeatable. While a given text may embrace multiple metaphors in presenting the past, we argue for associations between dominant metaphors, genre, and outlook. Map texts highlight problem-solving and arrival at one’s planned destination; they model an assertive, confident outlook. Palimpsest texts position character and reader as occupying one among many equally important temporal layers; they emphasize the landscape’s continuity but the individual’s impermanence, modeling a more modest vision of one’s place in time. Fractal texts work by analogy, denying difference between past and present and inviting readers to conclude that significant change may be impossible. Thus each model uses the classical past to urge and thus perhaps to develop a particular approach to life.
