Lost futures: reading, memory and repression

Butler, Catherine ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3540-5756 2021. Lost futures: reading, memory and repression. International Research in Children's Literature 14 (2) , pp. 156-168. 10.3366/ircl.2021.0394

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Abstract

Children's novels sometimes allude to events in the lives of their protagonists after the end of the main narrative, either through the assertions of authoritative narrators or the speculations of child characters themselves. Such predictions offer a hostage to fortune, however, for history may take a different direction from that envisaged by the narrative. In such cases, readers must find a way to navigate the contradictions between fictional and actual histories. That navigation is always potentially problematic, but perhaps particularly so in the case of Golden Age fictions such as Peter and Wendy (1911) and The Story of the Amulet (1906), the child protagonists of which were the right age to have reached adulthood with the advent of the Great War. This article describes the strategies developed by later readers and writers to cope with the disjunction between historical and fictional futures.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	English, Communication and Philosophy
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0080 Criticism P Language and Literature > PZ Childrens literature
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
ISSN:	1755-6198
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	29 June 2020
Date of Acceptance:	12 May 2020
Last Modified:	30 Nov 2024 00:30
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/132802

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