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The historical witch in contemporary young adult literature
Author(s) -
Wörsdörfer Anna Isabell
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
orbis litterarum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.109
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 1600-0730
pISSN - 0105-7510
DOI - 10.1111/oli.12286
Subject(s) - witch , german , plot (graphics) , literature , history , subject (documents) , identification (biology) , sociology , art , computer science , ecology , statistics , botany , mathematics , archaeology , biology , library science
This article conducts a comparative analysis of Les orangers de Versailles (2000) by French novelist Annie Pietri and Die Hexenkinder von Seulberg (2003) by German novelist Uschi Flacke. It examines how these two current young adult novels explore the subject of the early modern witch in general and how they treat the references of the past in particular in order to adapt them for their target audience: adolescent readers. While Pietri transposes the events of the Affair of the Poisons (1676–1682) into an adventurous detective plot—sometimes in a distinctly fairy‐tale manner—Flacke uses contemporary sources such as court records and letters with a decidedly documentary intention to describe the (violent) mechanisms of a rural witch‐hunt in the 1650s. In both novels, the female protagonists are developed in a way that offers young readers opportunities for identification and irritation—a combination that also provides didactic potential for school‐teaching.