Psychoanalysis and Narrative in Young Adult Fiction

Re-mapping Adolescence: Psychoanalysis and Narrative in Young Adult Fiction ~ervatJ\IJomaa A Thesis Submitted for The Degree of Doctor of Philosophy to The School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics The University of Sheffield September 2009 Abstract The start of the new millennium has witnessed literary interest in young adult fiction and a prominent rise in its popUlarity. My research focuses on the dynamics of adolescent narrative and the representations of the adolescent subject in a number of contemporary mainstream young adult novels with the aim of understanding adolescence as an inscribed literary identity. I take, as my starting point, Julia Kristeva's definition of adolescence as an open, non-biologically limited, psychic structure. This notion, when applied to young adult fiction, suggests that the texts work to construct psychologically-open implied readers, which in diverse ways echo and affirm the desires and expectations of real readers. While the introduction surveys contemporary critical currents in children and young adult fiction and places my research into context, each of the subsequent chapters examines one or more literary works by a single author. The main literary works discussed in this study include novels by Meg Rosoff, Geraldine McCaughrean, David Almond, lK. Rowling and Philip Pullman respectively; all of whom have widely appealed to readers of different age groups. In my analysis I use insights from psychoanalytic and psycho-linguistic theories mainly by Kristeva, Freud, Lacan and Winnicott, and where necessary my argument is supported by narrative analysis, reading theories and feminist criticism. By engaging with critical and psychoanalytical readings of paradigmatic young adult. texts, I aim to explicate the particularities of representing the adolescent economy and the distinctive nature of cotemporary young adult fiction in ways through which it opens its boundaries to adult readers. On another level, my objective is to elucidate the growing complexities and subtleties of contemporary children's literature in general and young adult fiction in particular. Acknowledgements I would like to express my profound gratitude to my supervisor Professor Rachel Falconer, whose support, guidance and sincere concern to ensure a satisfactory progress to my work, have been invaluable. I extend my thanks to the staff of the English Literature Department for their help and advice. Gratitude is also due to staff of AI-Baath University for their support. I would also like to thank my parents, sisters and brothers for their affectionate support, my parents-in-law for their persistent encouragement, and my friends in Sheffield and Syria for their generous support. On a personal note, I would like to express my great indebtedness to my loving husband, Hikmat, whose enormous support and dedication have been an inexhaustible source of inspiration. Last and by no means least, warm thanks are due to our daughters Leen and Janna for making our life happier. Without the help of all these peopl~, I would not have achieved this. Contents Introduction The Pleasure of the Adolescent text 1 Chapter One Adolescent Literature and Abjection: The Case of Meg Rosoffs How I Live Now 31 Chapter Two Blessed by a Daughter: Female Enunciation in Geraldine McCaughrean's Not the End ofthe World 71 Chapter Three Vision or Dream: Negotiations of Adolescent Identity in David Almond's Magical Realist Novels 109 Chapter Four J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Pleasures of Formulaic Fiction 146 Cbapter Five Good Enough Parents and Transitional Objects Growing Up in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials 189 Conclusion 231 Bibliograpby 237 Introduction The Pleasure of the Adolescent Text In The Pleasure of the Text Roland Barthes remarks that 'what pleasure wants is the site of a loss, the seam, the cut, the deflation, the dissolve which seizes the subject in the midst of bliss'l. If a reader of a text experiences such pleasure, as Barthes suggests, then this is achievable through reading texts which metaphorically capture the reader in the temporal uncertainty of the narrative. Barthes's account of textual pleasure implicitly steers us towards reading rebellious narratives that defy any straightforward categorisation and are open to various interpretations. The adolescent text, with its reflection of the volatility and openness of the adolescent subject, bears resemblance, in very particular ways, to the Barthesian text of bliss or jouissance. The -adolescent text cohabitates differences and 'confusion of tongues': its body reconciles both the child and the adult in many aspects of their binary oppositions culturally, ideologically, thematically, and linguistically (Pleasure 2-3). Like Barthes's text of bliss, the adolescent text invites the reader's subject to the scene ofloss, of dissolve between childhood and adulthood. It is possible for some readers to view adolescent fiction as offering a comfortable and undemanding reading in the way Barthesian readers read texts of plaisir in contrast to the demanding reading required in texts ofjouissance. In this thesis the adolescent text will be considered as a text which demands effective I Roland Barthes, The Pleasure o/the Text, trans. by Richard Miller (London: Jonathan Cape, 1976 [1975]), p. 7. (original Italics) Hereafter cited in the text as Pleasure. 2 participation of the reader; induces the reader to go into the opaque space of adolescence where pleasure becomes indescribable jouissance. Barthes, however, perceives his text as bounded by two edges: one is conformist and unchangeable represented by the language as we culturally know it and the other is 'the site of its effect', an open edge which is 'ready to assume any contours' (6). Undoubtedly, this is a territory which allows the reader to choose liberally whatever meaning is communicated by the narrative. In contrast, the adolescent text may be regarded as metaphorically creating two unfixed edges overlapping towards the space in between. In other words, the adolescent text plays on the instability of the adolescent implied reader it attempts to construct, so childhood and adulthood imperatives incessantly come into play within the scene of the text. The implied reader is, thus, depicted as confined between the past of childhood and the yet to come adulthood. Until recently, the adolescent text has been construed as an extension of children's fiction, and rarely as part of adult or mainstream literature; the adolescent (character or reader) is analysed as an older child who is neither a 'real' child nor an adult. Adolescence in this thesis will be seen less as an enclosed stage of biological development than an open condition, a metaphorical openness where the two edges of childhood and adulthood simultaneously ebb and tide towards the adolescent espace. While in this perspective adolescence transcends the literal sense of the word, the adolescent texts approached in this study are mainly young adult fiction which commonly intersects with adolescent literature in the general term as well as with fiction labelled as children's literature but has older children or adolescents as main characters. A study of certain 3 narrative characteristics in adolescent and children's literature will show how specific underlying features help to determine the reader's response and attitude to the text, for the very construction of a psychologically open implied reader often fulfils potential readers' requirements for new experimental readings. How these views can account for adult readers' interest in contemporary young adult and children's fiction will be a further line of argument in the present study. Not only are adolescent narratives challenging to the reader, but they also allow the adult reader to break momentarily out of his or her subject position and assume an adolescent identity: an identity in metamorphosis able to regenerate and negotiate its own being. Because this challenge is initiated by the act of reading adolescent narratives, it should be explained in terms of the interrelationships between the text and the reader. The text itself presents adolescence as a subversive feature in which young characters are involved. With themes so symptomatic of the open structure of adolescen~e, the adolescent text offers various ways in which adult and young readers can engage. It is crucial then that both textual and paratextual effects on the reader should be examined. Therefore, young adult and children's fiction touching on themes of adolescence will be considered within various parameters of literary production such as narrative, structure, semiotic inferences and ideological context, all of which are valuable components in the dynamics of a reader's response to a particular text. While it would be an overstatement to assume that all adolescent fiction offers the adult reader the possibility of effectively engaging with the adolescence of the text and hence rejuvenating a younger or other identity, my argument pertains most strongly to recent young adult and children's fiction which has had· 4 a demonstrable appeal to adult readers (i.e. where there is proven evidence that the text has attracted a substantial adult readership). There has been historical precedence for young adult fiction which has significantly influenced both adult and adolescent readers during the past century. William Golding's The Lord ofthe Flies (1954) and 1. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (1954) offered powerful narrative for adult readers as

Load more