<b>Curiouser & Curiouser</b>: Poetry and Archaeology: Narration in Contemporary Retellings of Folk and Fairy Tales for Young Adults: Jane Yolen's Briar Rose
Abstract
Conscientious, active, and self-aware, successful retellers must read as poets and archaeologists, locating and tracking image, sound, and pattern, deciphering metaphor and meaning for a contemporary audience. They must then translate their reading, subject to current socio-historical views, into the operative metaphors of their written work. In so doing, retellers describe the making of meaning as an ongoing process, transmitting and upholding the understanding that a tale has both shaped and been shaped by past voices and hands. As a result, it is the nature of retellings that their narration interacts with literary and social history, and that they are self-reflexive. As a novel that has two narrative voices, and that interacts with social and literary history, it is fitting that Jane Yolen's Briar Rose also charts two metaphors: one social, and one literary.
Issue
Section
Jabberwocky
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