Frosoulla Kofteros Phd Final *
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Pedagogy and its Paradoxes in Castaway Fictions from The Swiss Family Robinson To Lord of the Flies: Changing Representations of Subjectivity and ‘The Child’ Frosoulla Kofteros A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of the West of England, Bristol for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Faculty of Arts, Creative Industries & Education, University of the West of England, Bristol July 2016 Contents Abstract .............................................................................................. 1 Acknowledgements ………………………………………………... 2 Abbreviations ..................................................................................... 4 Introduction. ....................................................................................... 5 Chapter One The Swiss Family Robinson and the ‘Knowable’ Body ................... 64 Chapter Two The Coral Island and Scientific Rationalism: Introducing the Fragmented Self and Other .......................................................................................... 98 Chapter Three Kidnapped and The Post-Darwinian Castaway Child ......................... 133 Chapter Four A High Wind in Jamaica: The Self-Sufficient ‘I’ ................................ 157. Chapter Five Lord of the Flies: Strangers From Within ............................................. 193. Conclusion .......................................................................................... 228 Works cited Primary. ................................................................................................. 234 Secondary. .............................................................................................. 235 Abstract This thesis aims to broaden the scope of inquiry into castaway fiction for or about children by mapping the changing epistemological approaches to subjectivity, within five castaway novels spanning the early nineteenth century to post-World War Two. The novels include The Swiss Family Robinson (Johann Wyss, 1816), The Coral Island (Robert Ballantyne, 1857), Kidnapped (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886), A High Wind in Jamaica (Richard Hughes, 1929) and Lord of the Flies (William Golding, 1954). Taking close textual analysis as my default research method, this thesis is concerned with analysing how the child castaway materialised and evolved out a shift from religious hegemony and Humanist pedagogy operating in The Swiss Family Robinson to that of scientific rationalism and post-war postmodernism in Lord of the Flies. As a means of identifying and exploring the castaway child through these paradigm shifts, I have developed a psychoanalytic and poststructuralist theoretical framing for my analysis that draws on Jacques Lacan’s ‘The Mirror Stage As Formative Of The Function Of The I As Revealed In Psychoanalytic Experience’ (1966), and Julia Kristeva’s Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (1980). These theoretical approaches to the relationship between subjectivity and language enhance my readings of how these castaways advocate historically specific language structures through which subjectivity is produced and can be read dialogically. Chapter one will analyse how the castaway child materialises in The Swiss Family Robinson as a ‘knowable’ subject of Enlightenment pedagogy influenced by three key works: namely John Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile (1762) and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1919). Developed through this intellectual triad, I interpret Wyss’s novel as representing the beginnings of the epistemological child castaway, which evolves dialogically. The following chapters will investigate how this ‘knowable’ child is gradually destabilised through increasingly fragmented representations of the castaway child, developed through the epistemological contexts of scientific rationalism, Darwinism, psychoanalysis, and post-war postmodernism. !! 1! Acknowledgements This thesis is dedicated to my family. I feel truly blessed and fortunate for your unyielding love and support. Dad you were, and forever will be, my inspiration. Thank you for your love, enlightenment and wisdom. Mum – your steadfast belief and encouragement pulled me through the darkest times. Thank you for all of the stories and the mischief along the way. Mike – as brothers go, you are a legend. Your generous spirit, wit and jests enriched my journey throughout. Thank you, and Lina, for believing in me. I also wish to express my gratitude to my incredibly lively north London family for their long-standing support. My wonderful grandparents, in particular, have been pillars of love, sharing with me all they could. My Bristol family Teresa, George and now baby Teo (welcome!) have been with me every step of the way, nourishing this journey with friendship, laughter and stimulating conversations. Looks like we all made it after all! This thesis is in itself a product of numerous collaborative influences stemming primarily from my two thesis supervisors namely Josephine Dolan and Estella Tinknell. Your support, guidance and patience have been essential and greatly appreciated! It has honestly been a pleasure working with you both. Thank you for always encouraging me to explore further. Catherine Butler and Maria Nikolajeva have both been incredibly generous in their feedback following the viva examination, for which I am truly grateful. Your thought provoking comments have been insightful and invaluable. I must further thank Rebecca D’Monte and Ann Alston for their advice and comments along with Gillian Swanson and the Graduate office for their support. The library staff at UWE, and at the British Library, have been most patient and obliging throughout. I feel incredibly fortunate to have been inspired by a number of spirited lecturers whose thoughts and approaches have had a longstanding impact on my research. Joanne Winning and Alan Morrison – your enthusiasm has been illuminating. Karin Lesnik-Oberstein, Sue Walsh, Simon Flynn and Neil Cocks – thank you for introducing me to new and essential ways of reading. Lastly, I would like to thank Mavis Reimer for giving me the opportunity to cultivate my research interests in further fields of inquiry and for her guidance along the way. My deep-rooted friendships have indeed proven to be an invaluable source of 2! emotional and intellectual support. Branka and Helen - thank you for our chats and sporadic road trips. Bojanaki thank you for encouraging me to move beyond my perceived limitations with your ‘hearty criticism’. Your boundless zest and energy are indeed admirable. Finally, I must express my gratitude to the five authors whose works inspired each and every page. 3! Abbreviations The Swiss Family Robinson TSFR The Coral Island TCI Kidnapped K A High Wind in Jamaica AHW Lord of the Flies LOTF Robinson Crusoe RC 4! Introduction This thesis investigates the changing representations of subjectivity in castaway fiction for or about children from the early nineteenth century to post-World War two. The texts under consideration are The Swiss Family Robinson (Johann Wyss, 1816), The Coral Island (Robert Ballantyne, 1857), Kidnapped (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886), A High Wind in Jamaica (Richard Hughes, 1929) and Lord of the Flies (William Golding, 1954). Castaway fictions since Homer’s The Odyssey have recounted stories about shipwrecks, islands, spatial and psychic dislocations that most often feature male protagonists and precarious encounters with the ‘other.' The castaway subject manifests at the intersection of journey and catastrophe that traverses the boundaries between land and sea, while character development is explored through this subjective position of involuntary displacement. The question of how the castaway child materialised and evolved through these tropes during my chosen trajectory is central to this thesis. This diachronic approach to reading germinated through an observation I made while undertaking a Masters degree in Children’s Literature. I began to consider why and how three of the novels I had been studying by Wyss, Hughes and Golding constructed such different representations of the castaway child. Subsequent close readings suggested that these changes develop through a paradigm shift from dominant religious discourse to the hegemony of scientific rationality: a shift that produces the assured certainties governing castaway children in TSFR to a nihilistic lack of any such assuredness in LOTF. The recognition of this shift led to the question that went on to form the basis of this thesis; how is the shift from religious faith to scientific rationality articulated in other novels between TSFR and LOTF? The immediate problem raised here was choice of texts. Given that close textual analysis is my default research method, the need to manage word count became of primary concern. I already had three novels to support my basic premise of a paradigm shift, and given there was no intention to offer an overview of all relevant castaway publications, the decision to plot the period through five novels in total was based on a practical judgment. The grounds for excluding texts were varied, and the following were considered: Frederick Marryat's Masterman Ready, or the Wreck of the Pacific (1841), Jules Vern’s The Mysterious Island (1876) and H.G Wells’s The Island of Dr Mourreaut (1986). 5! Marryatt, a retired Royal Navy Captain, initially intended to write Masterman Ready as a sequel to his children’s favourite book, TSF. However, as stated in the preface, he found himself