452.What Is Steampunk? 25 Defining Titles from This Singular Speculative Genre “Crafter tinker with technology.” Nature. International Journal of Communication, 6, 1201–1221. Collective Memory and the Stranger: Remembering and Forgetting the 1918 Finnish Civil War. Pump and Circumstance: Robert Boyle’s Literary Technology. “Why Steampunk (still) Matters.” Parliament & Wake.

Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, 20(3), 319–333. Extraordinary Pasts: Steampunk as a Mode of Historical Representation. “Steampunk: A Genre Whose Time Has Come.” Readers’ Advisor News. Functions of Victorian Culture at the Present Time Athens:Ohio University Press. Teale (2009) “What’s Happening in YA Literature? Trends in Books For Adolescents.” Journal Of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 52.7: 563–572. Finding Meaning in Memory: A Methodological Critique of Collective Memory Studies. Clacking Control Societies: Steampunk, History, and the Difference Engine of Escape. Difference Engines and Other Infernal Devices: History According to Steampunk. Gross, Cory (2010) “A History of Steampunk.” Steampunk Scholar. Neo-Victorian Studies, 3(1), 1–45.īrownlee, John. We identify three major elements-Victorian history, the workings of cultural memory, and the modification of and recombining of past technologies and literary forms into the genre of steampunk-and then apply these to an analysis of Westerfeld’s trilogy.īowser, Rachel A. In mechanical fashion, the cogs of steampunk move with and against each other to produce and revise an imagined “What if?” We posit that steampunk’s complexities might be better understood by examining the parts of the machine, those cogs that make the engine of steampunk work. This literary form, then, is shaped through a confluence of history, cultural memory, and fictional technologies.

Critics note that steampunk takes an historical past and either reimagines it or repositions it in the future.

In order to do so, we examine the “cogs” of the genre machine and its use of nostalgic longing for a revised past/future to rebel against present day cultural norms.

In this article, we offer an explanation of steampunk and theorize the genre and its functions within Scott Westerfeld’s YA series Leviathan.

Leviathan steampunk