Death, Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Adolescent Literature

by Kathryn James

Overview

Knowledge about carnality and its limits provides the agenda for much of the fiction written for adolescent readers today, yet there exists little critical engagement with the ways in which it has been represented in the young adult novel in either discursive, ideological, or rhetorical forms. Death, Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Adolescent Literature is a pioneering study that addresses these methodological and contextual gaps. Focusing on texts produced since the late-1980s, and drawing on a range of theoretical perspectives, Kathryn James shows how representations of death in young adult literature are invariably associated with issues of sexuality, gender, and power. Under particular scrutiny are the trope of woman/death, the eroticizing and sexualizing of death, and the ways in which the gendered subject is represented in dialogue with the processes of death, dying, and grief. Through close readings of historical literature, fantasy fictions, realistic novels, dead-narrator tales, and texts from genres including Gothic, horror, and post-disaster, James reveals not only how cultural discourses influence and are influenced by literary works, but how relevant the study of death is to adolescent fiction--the literature of "becoming."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415888561
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	01/24/2011
Series:	Children's Literature and Culture
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Kathryn James teaches children's literature at Deakin University, Melbourne. Her publications have appeared in Papers: Explorations into Children's Literature, Children's Literature in Education, and New Talents 21C.

Table of Contents

Series Editor’s Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Beginning with Endings: Death in Children’s Literature

Chapter One: Points of Departure: Death, Culture, Representation

Chapter Two: Matilda’s Last Dance: Death and Historical Fiction

Chapter Three: Verisimilitude: Representing Death "In the Real"

Chapter Four: Beyond Consensus Reality: Death and Fantasy Fiction

Chapter Five: Imagined Futures: Death and the Post-Disaster Novel

Conclusion: Mapping the Landscape: The Unknown Country

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Editorial Reviews

"Death is universal and inevitable, which is precisely why James (Deakin Univ, Melbourne, Australia) believes its frequent appearance in adolescent literature, to date little studied, is a topic worthy of analysis...James makes a good case for the application of her ideas to other Anglophone literature, and without doubt she breaks new ground in the study of a topic widely represented in fiction for teens, yet not widely studied...Recommended."

-- Choice, June 2009

'Uncompromising in its refusal to sentimentalise either adolescent experience or its representation, Death, Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Adolescent Literature forces its readers to confront what is at stake in the ideologies underlying fiction for young adults.' - Shelley King, Times Higher Education Supplement

'Uncompromising in its refusal to sentimentalise either adolescent experience or its representation, Death, Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Adolescent Literature forces its readers to confront what is at stake in the ideologies underlying fiction for young adults.' - Shelley King, Times Higher Education Supplement

From the Publisher