Fighting Tyranny in Fantastic Literature for Children and Young Adults

Fighting Tyranny in Fantastic Literature for Children and Young Adults Dissertation zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades (Dr. phil.) des Fachbereichs Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft der Universität Osnabrück vorgelegt von Karin Kokorski aus Osnabrück Osnabrück, 2020 Table of Contents 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................ 2 2. Combatants ........................................................................................................... 18 2.1 Female Adversaries .............................................................................................. 20 2.2 Male Adversaries ................................................................................................. 85 2.3 Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 145 3. Justifications of War .......................................................................................... 151 3.1 Wrongful Authority ............................................................................................ 156 3.2 The Construction of Difference ......................................................................... 199 3.3 The Use and Abuse of Religion ......................................................................... 256 3.4 Just War .............................................................................................................. 280 4. Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 303 5. Evaluation of Findings ....................................................................................... 317 6. Works Cited ....................................................................................................... 327 1. Introduction Basic Premise Recent years have seen an increasing interest in fantastic literature for children and young adults, a fact that has instigated new debates regarding the genre in public and scholarly discourse. While young people might read books such as the Harry Potter series for entertainment purposes only, scholars have discovered other reasons to investigate the genre in greater detail. In his article “Cultural Studies, New Historicism and Children’s Literature”, Tony Watkins argues that “the narratives we give [our children] to make sense of cultural experience, constitute a kind of mapping, maps of meaning that enable our children to make sense of the world. They contribute to children’s sense of identity, an identity that is simultaneously personal and social” (Watkins 1992, 183). In her book Disturbing the Universe. Power and Repression in Adolescent Literature, Roberta Seelinger Trites goes a step further in stating that literature for children and especially for young adults serve as “a tool of socialization” (Trites 54) that instils “personal social responsibility” and “individual social involvement” (ibid. 81) into its readership. Following this line of argument, the books might change the reader’s perception of and engagement with his or her social environment. My analyses suggest that justifications of war, especially the interpretive directions the books favour, support Watkins’ interpretation of literature as cultural maps, as well as Trites’ portrayal of literature as formative device. I aim to highlight the cultural significance of fantasy fiction for children and young adults and its function as a cultural force of today’s youth. Genre Definitions and Scholarly Dispositions Before I turn to the definitions of children’s and young adult literature, I firstly take a closer look at the fantasy genre. The books under discussion lay out different categories of fantasy literature. While numerous scholars have categorized this genre, I mostly refer to Farah Mendlesohn’s Rhetoric of Fantasy (2008) and Gates et al.’s Fantasy Literature for Children and Young Adults (2003). None of the categories below are set in stone; rather they paint a general picture, allowing me to classify the books under discussion more easily. The mode of fantasy literature, however, does not necessarily mean a different agenda or reasoning when it comes to the fight against tyranny. Therefore, I only briefly take a closer look at the genre. 2 Some of the works under scrutiny belong to the category of immersive or secondary world fantasies, meaning they are “set entirely within an imagined world, without any overt reference to the world of the reader” (Mendlesohn and James 253).1 While these settings are independent of the primary world the reader inhabits (ibid. 254), other stories are set in the primary world, but overlap with this world. These books therefore belong to “low fantasy”, “in which the fantastic appears in the ordinary world […], as opposed to the epic other worlds of high fantasy” (ibid.).2 Additionally, I look into what Mendlesohn and James call “portal fantasy” (ibid.), or what Gates et al call “journey fantasy” (Gates et al. 58).3 In this type of fantasy, the protagonists travel (most likely through a portal) to another world “while the primary world [is] simply ignored” (ibid. 113). There is often no straight line dividing these categories; especially since in some cases, the fantastic also intrudes into the primary world; these stories additionally belong to what Mendlesohn and James call “intrusion fantasy”, “a story in which the fantastic intrudes into the mundane world” (Mendlesohn and James 253). Those stories that directly relate to the reader’s world might more easily and overtly apply to said world, for example when it comes to drawing connections to historical circumstances. What all the books in my analysis have in common is that they belong to the category of heroic fantasy literature for children and young adults, which Veglahn explains as follows: “[t]he term heroic fantasy refers here to stories in which a young human protagonist struggles against evil forces, either in an imagined world or in a situation where the supernatural intrudes upon the ‘real’ world” (Veglahn 108). Furthermore, all of these books focus on the quest motif, and therefore belong to what Mendlesohn and James define as “quest fantasy”: “a story (frequently in multiple volumes) involving one or more people travelling through a landscape, learning about the world, and fulfilling some quest or destiny” (Mendlesohn and James 253f.). This does not only comprise the protagonist’s quest for identity, knowledge, peace, or a special object, but also resonates with reader, as “fantasy literature represents our personal need and the universal quest for deeper realities and eternal truth” (Gates et al 2). The books under scrutiny follow Lois Kuznet’s definition of “substantial and original fantasy world” (Kuznet 19). Kuznet continues that “[t]his world has to be both sustained enough (often through two or three volumes) and clearly and significantly delineated 1 The Inheritance Cycle and the House of Night series are two examples of this category. 2 Examples for this category are Harry Potter, The Dark Is Rising Sequence, and to a certain degree His Dark Materials. 3 His Dark Materials, and The Chronicles of Narnia are two examples of this category. 3 enough (often by incorporating elements of classic mythologies), to serve as a fitting background for a story in which the forces of good and evil clash and in which evil is, at least temporarily, defeated” (ibid. 19f.). My analyses suggest that all books under discussion, no matter the connection between the primary and secondary world, shed light on the reader’s world. Although fantasy literature is often stigmatized as evasive and escapist (Gates et al 3), I agree with Peter Hunt and Millicent Lenz who argue that “we do not escape ourselves or our situation [when reading fantasy]: fantasy has an inevitable role as a commentary on, or counterpart to, reality and realism” (Hunt and Lenz 8). Although, according to Gates et al., “[t]he single most important criterion for a successful fantasy is the capacity to incite wonder” (Gates et al. 14, emphasis in original), it is far more important for my analysis that fantasy addresses personal growth, moral codes, temptation and questionable adult authority; however, fantasy fiction does not tackle these issues in an explicit manner, but instead conveys its messages through metaphors. In Lori M. Campbell’s eyes, literary fantasy “is by definition symbolic” (L. M. Campbell 6; emphasis in original). According to Farah Mendlesohn, this is almost unavoidable as “even the most creative writers find it difficult in [fantasy literature] to avoid impressing upon readers an authoritative interpretation of their world” (Mendlesohn 2008, xx), which in turn influences the reader’s social and cultural perceptions of his/her own world. In her article “The Power of Magical Thinking” in The Wall Street Journal, Shirley S. Wang claims that “child-development experts are recognizing the importance of imagination and the role it plays in understanding reality” (Wang 2009). According to Paul Harris, professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, this is a necessary step as “[t]he imagination is absolutely vital for contemplating reality, not just those things we take to be mere fantasy” (qtd. ibid.). Additionally, a psychological study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology in 2014 insists that “reading the Harry Potter series significantly improved young peoples’ perception of stigmatized groups like immigrants,

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