Edinburgh Napier University

  The rose has been valued, revered, and infused with meaning across time and cultures—from the earliest chemists to appear in the historical record to today's mass-market perfumes, from the religious festivals of ancient Rome to the works of the Romantic poets. This is also the case in 21st century YA science fiction and fantasy, where roses have featured as both motif and symbols of romance, power, class, and religion. This paper takes a critical plant studies approach to tracing some key examples, from President Snow’s roses in Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games series, to the juxtaposition of famine and flowers in Diana Pinguicha’s A Curse of Roses. It will examine how the rose as a concept draws on the flower’s place in popular consciousness to provoke recognition and emotion in readers, often acting as a bridge between distant, imagined worlds and our own.