Beowulf as Children’s Literature ed. by Bruce Gilchrist and Britt Mize (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Beowulf as Children’s Literature ed. by Bruce Gilchrist and Britt Mize Alexandra Garner (bio) Bruce Gilchrist and Britt Mize, eds. Beowulf as Children’s Literature. U of Toronto P. 2021. Bruce Gilchrist and Britt Mize’s collection Beowulf as Children’s Literature effectively brings together many disparate fields and discourses, from assessing historical perspectives on Beowulf’s appropriateness for children, to examining particular case studies of children’s or young adult retellings, to considering representations of femininity in iterations with illustration. The nine included essays display an impressive range, approaching Beowulf adaptation/s for children conceptually and practically over the last two centuries of literary publication. The volume also includes Gilchrist’s fairly exhaustive bibliography of versions of Beowulf made for or marketed to children, as well as Mize’s interview with Rebecca Barnhouse and James Rumford, two authors of recent children’s adaptations of Beowulf. The collection traces two major threads: first, a historical focus, and second, essays on method and message. These two strands characterize the challenges with approaches to and adaptations of Beowulf as children’s literature—one that scholars working in children’s and young adult literature contend with regularly—which Mize precisely identifies in the Introduction to the volume: “a perception that children’s adaptations of long-appreciated literature will be only subtractive and attenuating, instrumental in purpose, and therefore analytically uninteresting” (5). The included essays demonstrate that Beowulf’s children’s adaptations and retellings are anything but, and show the nuances of different approaches to this single text in its many and varied remediations, adaptations, and recontextualization. Mize’s introduction disclaims this outdated perspective on adaptation directly, distancing the volume from fidelity discourses and identifying instead the dual challenge of remaking Beowulf for readers both modern and young. Despite this assertion that the volume focuses on what can be gleaned from considerations of Beowulf for children rather than question how faithful such adaptations are, discussions of authenticity, fidelity, and “genuine” medievalism do appear throughout the collection. Some, like Mize’s essay, “Beowulf, Bèi’àowǔfǔ, and the Social Hero” as an example, embrace the dialogic relationship [End Page 338] between the antecedent work and its Chinese adaptation to shine new light on the literary and cultural significance of the medieval poem. By re-experiencing the familiar Beowulf through the lens of its Chinese adaptation, Mize argues, we discover and must contend with different value systems at work with regard to heroism, identity, and community. Several of the included essays address this tension between familiar and unfamiliar in retellings and remediations of Beowulf, also touched upon by both Barnhouse and Rumford in their interview, “The Practice of Adapting Beowulf for Younger Readers.” Both Barnhouse and Rumford describe the challenges of retaining enough of the narrative, themes, and medievalism for it to be recognizably Beowulf while also adapting to their particular authorial agenda. Amber Dunai also examines the folkloric elements common to Beowulfs both medieval and modern in her essay “Tolkien, Beowulf, and Faërie: Adaptations for Readers Aged ‘Six to Sixty.’” Dunai adeptly navigates the complexities of these apparently contradictory perspectives in her assessment of the suitability of Beowulf texts for certain demographics of audiences, and how such attempts to categorize or restrict readership reveal implicit biases, priorities, and approaches regarding intended or expected audience. As an influential figure in the fields of medieval studies (and medievalism), fantasy genre studies, and children’s and young adult literature, Tolkien’s approach impacts subsequent literary and popular perspectives, and Dunai’s thoughtful essay thus will prove useful to many working in related fields. This preoccupation with the difference between literature for all and literature specifically for children is another sub-theme to the collection, which Barnhouse and Rumford explore from a publishing perspective while other essays engage it more academically. This is, of course, a question central to and inherent in the study of children’s and young adult literature; like the “Middle Ages” from which Beowulf originates, like the concept of the child itself, children’s literature is an entirely constructed and mutable category. Yvette Kisor’s “Children’s Beowulfs for the New Tolkien Generation,” examines the literary and aesthetic medievalisms that...