Aspects of Time and Memory in Literature for Children and Young Adults

This volume offers a wide variety of theoretical and critical reflections on the ways that different aspects of time and memory are deployed in literature and media for children and young adults that are related to historically and regionally contingent concepts of childhood: from picturebooks to cross-over and young adult novels, from classic children’s literature to adaptations of fairy-tales, and from musical adaptations to films. The interface of the two concepts in question is explored through a range of diverse writers, texts, and cultural traditions across the 19th to 21st centuries.
The collection addresses key topics in modern critical theory and children’s literature criticism, such as the imaginative reconstruction of the past, the depiction of time and time objects in picturebooks, the notions of traumatic memory and post-memory in literature. It also considers how texts work as sites of memory by referring to and thus revisiting, challenging or reinterpreting older genres.