For centuries, the Arthurian legends have fascinated and inspired countless writers, artists, and readers, many of whom first became acquainted with the story as youngsters. From the numerous retellings of Malory and versions of Tennyson for young people to the host of illustrated volumes to which the Arthurian Revival gave rise. From the Arthurian youth groups for boys (and eventually for girls) run by schools and churches to the school operas, theater pieces, and other entertainment for younger audiences; and from the Arthurian juvenile fiction sequences and series to the films and television shows featuring Arthurian characters, children have learned about the world of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.

Adaptations of canonical texts have played an important role throughout the history of children's literature and have been seen as an active and vital contributing force in establishing a common ground for intercultural communication across generations and borders. This collection analyses different examples of adapting canonical texts in or for children's literature encompassing adaptations of English classics for children and young adult readers and intercultural adaptations of children's classics across Europe. The international contributors assess both historical and transcultural adaptation in relation to historically and regionally contingent concepts of childhood. By assessing how texts move across age-specific or national borders, they examine the traces of a common literary and cultural heritage in European children's literature.

An examination of the numerous adaptations of Malory's Morte Darthur for children in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. From the time when the writer J.T. Knowles first adapted Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur for a juvenile audience in 1862, there has been a strong connection between children and the Arthurian legend. Between 1862 and 1980, numerous adaptations of the Morte were produced for a young audience in Britain and America. They participated in cultural dialogues relating to the medieval, literary heritage, masculine development, risk, adventure and mental health through their reworking of the narrative. Covering texts by J.T. Knowles, Sidney Lanier, Howard Pyle, T.H. White, Roger Lancelyn Green, Alice Hadfield, John Steinbeck and Susan Cooper, among others, this volume explores how books for children frequently become books about children, and consequently books about the contiguity and separation of the adult and the child. Against the backdrop of Victorian medievalism, imperialism, the rise of child psychology and two world wars, the diverse ways in which Malory's text has been altered with a child reader in mind reveals changing ideas regarding the relevance of King Arthur, and the complex relationship between authors and their imagined juvenile readers. It reveals the profoundly fantasised figures behind literary representations of childhood, and the ways in which Malory's timeless tale, and the figure of King Arthur, have inspiredand shaped these fantasies. Dr ELLY MCCAUSLAND is Senior Lecturer in British and American literature at the University of Oslo.

An account in words and pictures of how the world of Camelot and King Arthur's knights was reflected in, and shaped by, book illustration.

How is the life-altering event of migration narrated for children, especially if it was caused by Anti-Semitism and poverty? What of the country of origin is remembered and what is forgotten, and what of the target country when the migration is imagined there a century later? Looking Forward, Looking Back examines today’s representation of Jewish mass migration from Eastern Europe to America around the turn of the last century. It explores the collective story that emerges when American authors look back at this exodus from an Eastern European home to a new one to be established in America. Focusing on children’s literature, it investigates a wide range of texts including young adult literature as well as picture books and hence sheds light on the dynamics of the verbal and the visual in generating images of the self and other, the familiar and the strange. This book is of interest to scholars in the field of imagology, children’s literature, cultural studies, American studies, Slavic studies, and Jewish studies.

For fifteen centuries, legends of King Arthur have enthralled us. Born in the misty past of a Britain under siege, half-remembered events became shrouded in ancient myth and folklore. The resulting tales were told and retold, until over time Arthur, Camelot, Avalon, the Round Table, the Holy Grail, Excalibur, Lancelot, and Guinevere all became instantly recognizable icons. Along the way, Arthur’s life and times were recast in the mold of the hero’s journey: Arthur’s miraculous conception at Tintagel through the magical intercession of his shaman guide, Merlin; the childhood deed of pulling the sword from the stone, through which Arthur was anointed King; the quest for the Holy Grail, the most sacred object in Christendom; the betrayal of Arthur by his wife and champion; and the apocalyptic battle between good and evil ending with Arthur’s journey to the Otherworld. Touching on all of these classic aspects of the Arthur tale, Christopher R. Fee seeks to understand Arthur in terms of comparative mythology as he explores how the Once and Future King remains relevant in our contemporary world. From ancient legend to Monty Python, Arthur: God and Hero in Avalon discusses everything from the very earliest versions of the King Arthur myth to the most recent film and television adaptations, offering insight into why Arthur remains so popular—a hero whose story still speaks so eloquently to universal human needs and anxieties.

Before stories of King Arthur and Robin Hood were adapted and readapted for film, television and theater, radio scriptwriters looking for material turned to Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur (1485) and Howard Pyle's The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (1883). Throughout the 1930s to the mid-1950s, their legends inspired storylines for Abbott and Costello, Popeye, Let's Pretend, Escape, Gunsmoke, The Adventures of Superman and others. Many of these adaptations reflect the moral and ethical questions of the day, as characters' faced issues of gender relations, divorce, citizenship, fascism, crime and communism in a medieval setting.

This collection provides an innovative and wide-ranging introduction to the world of Arthur by looking beyond the canonical texts and themes, taking instead a transversal perspective on the Arthurian narrative. Together, its thirty-four chapters explore the continuities that make the material recognizable from one century to another, as well as transformations specific to particular times and places, revealing the astonishing variety of adaptations that have made the Arthurian story popular in large parts of the world. Divided into four parts—The World of Arthur in the British Isles, The European World of Arthur, The Material World of Arthur, and The Transversal World of Arthur — the volume tracks the legend’s movement across temporal, geographical, and material boundaries. Broadly chronological, each part views the unfolding Arthurian story through its own lens, while temporal and geographical overlaps between the sections underscore the proximity of these developments in the legend’s history. Ranging from early Latin chronicles and Welsh poetry to twenty-first century anime and political conspiracies, this comprehensive and illuminating book will be of interest to anyone researching Arthurian literature or tracing the evolution of medievalism through literature, the visual arts, and popular culture.

"Lady Charlotte's translation of the Mabinogion opens a window into several important nineteenth-century intellectual issues. It sheds light on the interrelationships among antiquarianism, philosophy, folklore collection, and children's literature that underlie the works of such seminal creators of the Victorian fairy tale as the Brothers Grimm.".