This week, the e-book version of my new monograph, Celtic Myth in Contemporary Children’s Fantasy, was released. This is my first experience of the braver new world of simultaneous e-book and hardback publication. The hardback won’t be out there for another couple of weeks, but the book is now, for all intents and purposes, published. Hooray!
This book is part of Palgrave Macmillan’s
Critical Approaches to Children’s Literature series, and when a monograph is part of a series it has an additional layer of “house style” to adhere to. This means that my Table of Contents is a little less detailed than I originally intended. I tend to work better with chapter titles which are then subdivided into smaller sections with their own subtitles. In
my first monograph on Tolkien, all chapter titles and subtitles appeared in the Table of Contents, but with this one I had to stick to the rules and include chapter titles only.
For those of you, though, who may want to know a bit more about the contents of each chapter and would like to see the subtitles for each chapter section, I am offering below an “extended” table of contents with page numbers – I hope it will prove useful to readers.
Celtic Myth in Contemporary Children’s Fantasy: Idealization, Identity, Ideology
(Extended) Table of Contents
Note on Spelling and Dating (p. vii)
Acknowledgments (p. ix)
Contents (p. xi)
List of Figures (p. xiii)
Chapter 1: Introduction: ‘Celticity’, fantasy, and the child readership (p. 1)
Fantasy: tropes, categories, structure (p. 2)
Myth, Legend, Folktale and their relation to Fantasy: Reception and Adaptation (p. 4)
The Celts, Celticity and ‘Celtic’ myth (p. 7)
Children’s literature, Celticity and Ideology (p. 15)
Unravelling Celticity: The Structure of this Study (p. 16)
Chapter 2: Otherworldly Ireland: Pat O’Shea’s The Hounds of the Mórrígan and Kate Thompson’s The New Policeman (p. 27)
Revisiting the ancient Irish deities (p. 28)
Irish Landscape and Images of Celticity in Tír-na-nÓg (p. 36)
From Pagan ‘Gods’ to Irish Folklore (p. 45)
Celtic Past and Christian Present – Redux (p. 53)
Chapter 3: Celticity and the Irish Diaspora: Re-writing Finn mac Cumaill and Cúchulainn for American youngsters (p. 71)
Mary Tannen’s The Wizard Children of Finn (p. 72)
Mary Tannen’s The Lost Legend of Finn (p. 81)
Henry Neff’s The Tapestry Series (p. 85)
The hero’s journeys of Max McDaniels and Cúchulain (p. 86)
Irish Gods and Goddesses: Weaving a new Tapestry of Myth (p. 93)
Irishness, Celticity and the Material Culture of The Tapestry (p. 100)
Chapter 4: Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain: Building Fantasy upon Forgery (p. 115)
Prydain and Wales (p. 116)
Fantasy Templates: From ‘Welshify’ The Lord of the Rings to ‘Filling the Gaps’ of Welsh Tradition (p. 122)
Prydain and the Counterfeit Tradition (p. 132)
Feisty girls, Oracular Pigs, Evil Enchantresses and Triple Goddesses (p. 138)
Chapter 5: Welsh Heritage for Teenagers: Alan Garner, Jenny Nimmo, Catherine Fisher (p. 157)
Alan Garner: The Owl Service (p. 159)
Jenny Nimmo: The Magician Trilogy (p. 177)
Catherine Fisher’s Darkhenge (p. 195)
Chapter 6: Susan Cooper and the Arthur of the Welsh (p. 219)
The ‘Dark Ages’ and a Celto-Roman Arthur (p. 220)
The Arthur of Welsh legend and folklore (p. 231)
Wales and Celticity: ‘Oldest Hills’, Celtic stereotypes, and Gravesian Interpretations (240)
Chapter 7: Conclusion: Celticity and ‘Celtic’ Heritage (p. 263)
(Re)defining the ‘Celts’, ‘Celtic’ history and ‘Celtic’ mythology (p. 264)
The ‘Celtic’ past as national/cultural heritage (p. 267)
The ‘Celtic’ Character (p. 271)
