Barbarians are people too: the discourse of barbarism in young adult fantasy fiction

Barbarism and the idea of the barbarian is an old and powerful concept. Initially developed by the Greeks as a method for delineating Greek and 'other', the idea was gradually appropriated into Roman literature and political rhetoric in order to both express a sense of exclusion of the barbarian and also reinforce a sense of their own cultural and intellectual superiority. In doing so, a discourse around the barbaric emerged and continued to adapt to the changing socio-cultural landscape of the Roman world ...