The Spatiality of Children's Fantasy Fiction Anthony Pavlik
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by OpenGrey Repository A View from Elsewhere: The Spatiality of Children’s Fantasy Fiction Anthony Pavlik A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Newcastle University April 2011 i Abstract Fantasy other worlds are often seen as alternatives with which to critique the ‘real’ world, or as offering spaces where child protagonists can take advantage of the otherness they encounter in their own process of maturation. However, such readings of fantasy other worlds, rather than celebrating heterogeneity, implicitly see ‘other’ spaces as ‘unreal’ and there either to support the real in some way, as being in some way inferior to the real, or in need of salvation by protagonists from the real world. This thesis proposes a reading of such texts that draws on social theories of constructed spatiality in order to examine first how, to varying degrees, and depending upon the attitude of authors towards the figure of the child, such ‘fantasy’ places can be seen as potentially real “thirdspaces” of performance and agency for protagonists, and thus as neutral spaces of activity rather than confrontation or growth and, second, how such presentations may be seen as reflecting back into the potential for the spatial activity of readers. ii Acknowledgements When I started on the PhD process, the road I travelled along was by no means a straight one. Confident, arrogantly so perhaps, in my abilities, I took many wrong turns. Had I continued along that road, I would never have completed this thesis, and so I wish to thank those who have helped to keep me broadly on the straight and narrow. First, and foremost, my special thanks go to Professor Kimberly Reynolds, who was willing to take me on as a doctoral student in the first place. Had she not believed in me and agreed to accept me, when others did not, my journey may well have stopped right there and then. She guided me through the initial stages, and she provided a constant and much valued point of contact with the world of children’s literature throughout my meanderings. My thanks also go to Professor Kate Chedzgoy, who took over as my supervisor half way through the process and provided valuable critical feedback on my writing and my ideas, and who got me to the final torturous stages of the journey to completion, even though I rarely managed to stay on schedule. Finally, I would also like to offer my special thanks to Hazel Sheeky and Dr. Madelyn Travis, fellow travellers on the PhD path, who gave me invaluable moral support, encouragement and assistance when I most needed it, and helped me to feel that I was not a lone traveller. iii Table of Contents ABSTRACT....................................................................................................................................i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS..........................................................................................................ii INTRODUCTION.........................................................................................................................1 CHAPTER ONE: A THIRD WAY............................................................................................33 REAL AND /OR UNREAL ..............................................................................................................34 THIRDSPACE .............................................................................................................................37 SPATIAL PRACTICE AND SPATIAL PRESENCE ............................................................................42 LITERARY THIRDSPACE ............................................................................................................47 EXITS AND ENTRANCES ............................................................................................................60 A SPACE OF PLAY .....................................................................................................................71 CONCLUDING REMARKS ............................................................................................................81 CHAPTER TWO: NO PLACE LIKE HOME .........................................................................86 CONTROLLED SPACES IN MRS MOLESWORTH ’S THE CUCKOO CLOCK .....................................88 THE CONFUSED SPATIALITY OF C. S. LEWIS ’S THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA .......................100 CASTLES IN THE AIR : PHILIP PULLMAN ’S HIS DARK MATERIALS .........................................115 CLOSING DOORS IN NEIL GAIMAN ’S CORALINE .....................................................................128 CONCLUDING REMARKS ..........................................................................................................137 CHAPTER THREE: BEING THERE ....................................................................................140 WORLD -BUILDING IN EDITH NESBIT ’S THE MAGIC CITY ......................................................141 PICTURING THIRDSPACE : SENDAK ’S WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE ...................................155 THE SPATIAL PRESENCE OF WILLIAM MAYNE ’S A GAME OF DARK ......................................164 SPATIAL NOMADISM : DIANA WYNNE JONES ’S THE HOMEWARD BOUNDERS ........................171 MAPPING IMAGINED OTHER WORLDS IN N. E. BODE ’S THE SLIPPERY MAP .........................182 CONCLUDING REMARKS ..........................................................................................................191 iv CHAPTER FOUR: WHERE ARE WE NOW? .....................................................................194 VISUALISING THIRDSPACE ......................................................................................................197 THE TEXT IN PLAY ..................................................................................................................213 TRAVERSING WORLDS —FAMILIAR OR STRANGE ...................................................................217 SPACES OF LIVED LIVES .........................................................................................................226 BUILDING BRIDGES IN KATHERINE PATERSON ’S BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA ............................230 CONCLUDING REMARKS ..........................................................................................................239 CONCLUSION..........................................................................................................................248 ENDNOTES...............................................................................................................................260 WORKS CITED........................................................................................................................269 PRIMARY TEXTS ......................................................................................................................269 SECONDARY TEXTS .................................................................................................................270 1 Introduction No story, irrespective of type or genre, is ever really placeless. Whilst the time of a story may be unclear or ambiguous (as is the case with those fairy tales that start with “once upon a time”, or with the non-linear texts in what might be termed postmodern fiction), place will always have a specific presence of some kind (even if it is the space of the human mind). In fantasy novels in particular, there is “a very strong sense of landscape” (Manlove, Fantasy 1) and, here, I will be examining a very particular type of fantasy narrative landscape: the ‘other worlds’ in fantasy fiction for children. More specifically, this type of fiction presents worlds that are, in theory, “outside the realm of the possible” (Doležel, Heterocosmica 165), worlds that are different from the represented world of quotidian consensus reality, but which connect to that consensus reality in some way (which includes those instances where the ‘other’ realm erupts into consensus reality). To a large degree, the spatial nature of such fantasy texts remains largely unexplored. It is true that attention has been given to questions of place and space in individual texts.1 However, it remains the case that children’s literature criticism generally “has not paid enough attention to questions of spatiality [...] and has rarely attempted to theorise the nature of place and space in children’s literature” (Bavidge 323). 2 My aim in this thesis is to redress this general lack. As Franco Moretti observes, “ each space determines, or at least encourages, its own kind of story ,” such that “ what happens depends a lot on where it happens (70, original emphasis). Moretti’s observation argues for an importance for space in the novel that is not always matched by the attention given to it. Clearly, writers make conscious choices about situating narratives 2 within these multiple world contexts, which inevitably places an additional emphasis on their spatial nature beyond their being merely “the theatre, the disinterested stage or setting, of action” (Lefebvre 410), as simply back-drops for the adventures of the child protagonists. This way of thinking about the spatiality of fiction argues for the spatial in fantasy ‘other world’ fiction as being an important textual element in the communication and reception of meaning for, in fantasy fiction, “it is the spatial that determines the realm of