Diana Wynne Jones: An Exciting and Exacting Wisdom

by William Moebius (Editor), Teya Rosenberg (Editor), Martha P. Hixon (Editor), Sharon M. Scapple (Editor), Donna R. White (Editor)

Overview

Diana Wynne Jones: An Exciting and Exacting Wisdom is a collection of scholarly essays examining the work of British author Diana Wynne Jones, whose prolific contributions to speculative fiction span the past thirty years. A contemporary of such well known fantastic authors as Alan Garner and Susan Cooper, Jones is also a clear influence on more recent writers such as J. K. Rowling. Her humorous and exciting stories, many published for children but read by all ages, are also complexly structured and thought provoking. These essays – written by academics and independent scholars from Australia, North America, Europe, and Asia – present a wide variety of approaches to and ideas about Jones’s work. This book will be of interest to Jones’s many admirers and to those who study or appreciate speculative fiction and children’s literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780820456874
Publisher:	Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers
Publication date:	07/05/2002
Series:	Studies in Children's Literature , #1
Pages:	187
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

The Editors: Teya Rosenberg, Assistant Professor of English at Southwest Texas State University, teaches courses in children’s literature and magical realism.
Martha P. Hixon, Assistant Professor of English at Middle Tennessee State University, teaches various children’s literature courses.
Sharon M. Scapple, Associate Professor of English at Minnesota State University, Moorhead, has published on children’s and adolescent literature and teaches courses in fantasy.
Donna R. White is author of A Century of Welsh Myth in Children’s Literature (1998) and Dancing with Dragons: Ursula K. Le Guin and the Critics (1999).

Table of Contents

Contents: Teya Rosenberg: Introduction – Karen Sands-O’Connor: Nowhere To Go, No One To Be: Diana Wynne Jones and the Concepts of Englishness and Self-Image – Maria Nikolajeva: Heterotopia as a Reflection of Postmodern Consciousness in the Works of Diana Wynne Jones – Karina Hill: Dragons and Quantum Foam: Mythic Archetypes and Modern Physics in Selected Works by Diana Wynne Jones – Deborah Kaplan: Diana Wynne Jones and the World-Shaping Power of Language – Charles Butler: Now Here: Where Now? Magic as Metaphor and as Reality in the Writing of Diana Wynne Jones – Sarah Fiona Winters: Good and Evil in the Works of Diana Wynne Jones and J. K. Rowling – Martha P. Hixon: The Importance of Being Nowhere: Narrative Dimensions and Their Interplay in Fire and Hemlock – Akiko Yamazaki: Fire and Hemlock: A Text as a Spellcoat – Sharon M. Scapple: Transformation of Myth in A Tale of Time City – Donna R. White: Living in Limbo: The Homeward Bounders as a Metaphor for Military Childhood – Alice Mills: The Trials and Tribulations of Two Dogsbodies: A Jungian Reading of Diana Wynne Jones’s Dogsbody – Marilynn S. Olson: Cats and Aliens in the Unreal City: T. S. Eliot, Diana Wynne Jones, and the Urban Experience – Charles Butler: Interview with Diana Wynne Jones.

Editorial Reviews

Scholars of children's literature from English-speaking countries and a couple of others explore the work of British speculative writer Jones. Among the perspectives are heterotopia as a reflection of postmodern consciousness, dragons and quantum foam, and a Jungian reading of . A March 2001 interview with her concludes the anthology. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews