Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons^™

Characters Through Time, Alyssa Venezia

Honors Thesis

T. S. Eliot once wrote that we “often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of [an author’s] work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously” (Eliot 37). By focusing on character adaptations, one comes to understand how authors of children’s books are able to adapt classic literature into age-appropriate texts that retain the merits of the original. Five sets of characters shall be analyzed to demonstrate the success of the adaptations presented in children’s literature. In the first, Sir Bedivere from Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur …