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The Bronze Bow | The Politics of Love and Violence in Elizabeth George Speare’s The Bronze Bow

Deborah Moreland received her doctorate in Literary Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas, writing her dissertation on the connection between high culture and low culture in early twentieth-century British literature. She now teaches and chairs the English department at a private school in Dallas. In the following essay on The Bronze Bow, she discusses ways in which Elizabeth George Speare communicates to young adults virtues she believes they seek in their lives, while placing the novel in the context of biblical stories current in the popular culture contemporary to the author.

In her Newbery acceptance speech for The Bronze Bow, Elizabeth Speare spoke to the purpose of her novel by indirectly commenting on the situation of the world at that time and the anxiety it generated in young people who “do not want to accept meaninglessness” in their lives. Looking for values, she said, they turn “urgently to the adult world for evidence that we have proved our values to be enduring. . . . They demand an honest answer. Those of us who have found Love and Honor and Duty to be a sure foundation” must find the words to communicate this to them (quoted in...

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