DOCTORAL THESIS Writing as Self-creation: An Examination of Characters Who Write in Selection of Texts for Children post 1960 Miyoshi, Maiko Award date: 2009 General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 05. Oct. 2021 Chapter One: Introduction My interest in the characters who write within books was kindled when I started my MA in children‟s literature course at Roehampton University in the year 2000. I realised that I encountered a number of characters portrayed in novels as being involved in the act of writing. My research for the MA dissertation „Writing & The Self: The act of writing as used in the work of two contemporary children‟s writers‟, focused on a limited number of case studies, but, in my current project, I had the intention to explore the phenomenon of these writing characters on a much bigger scale, and to try to gain some understanding about the effect of this literary pattern, including the reason for its employment in many recent texts for young readers. Since the beginning of this project, I have been speculating that there is some influence on this literary phenomenon resulting from the emphasis on individualism and the celebration of a unique self-identity within the culture and society where the books are read. I clearly remember that immediately after I arrived in the U.K. from Japan I was very surprised when I went to a big bookshop in central London, and found the main area of the ground floor was dedicated to a section on „Autobiography/Biography‟. Around the same time, I learned of the existence of a London art gallery devoted to portraits of people, called the National Portrait Gallery. At that time, I was even less familiar with art history than now, including the period when the artists often received commissions to paint portraits of those with status and wealth. I simply linked these two discoveries to the image of people in the U.K. who seem to be obsessed with „individuality‟ and their „self- identities‟. From the Japanese viewpoint, this obsession is something of a 1 stereotype, regarding people in the West, including the U.K. Reading texts for children published in the U.K., during my MA course, the impression I gathered is that the emphasis on the importance of individualism and achieving self-identity seems to be, on the whole, a common message. For me, the writing characters in texts for children appeared to be the embodiment of „role models‟, who express their feelings, opinions, demands, and, ultimately, themselves, to claim their existence. Initially, I had as my aim to conduct a comparative study regarding these writing characters in texts, comparing English children‟s literature and Japanese children‟s literature. I began to explore the characters who write within stories in English children‟s literature, as a starting point. This is partly because I wanted to examine the literature of the place where I commenced the research, and also partly because I felt that, if there is some link between contemporary Japanese children‟s literature and English children‟s literature, it is in the influence that English literature has had on Japanese children‟s literature. However, I soon realised, at this preliminary research stage, that the topic was spread over a wide area, and it would be difficult to establish a precise research question. Consequently, I reached the decision to focus on children‟s literature in English. I thought that my background in Japan would give me a more objective perspective in this study, rather than being a disadvantage. Ideology is described by Terry Eagleton as „ideas and beliefs which helps to legitimate the interests of a ruling group or class specifically by distortion and dissimulation‟ (1991:30), a quotation often cited, but in addition to this obvious kind of ideology, there is a more subtle kind of personal ideology that everybody has, consciously or unconsciously. The 2 latter ideology is possibly found in the texts for young readers written by authors who do not necessarily put forward the „interests of a ruling group or class‟. I believe ideologies, in both senses, must be clearer for bystanders to recognise than for participants, who perhaps take such notions for granted. Eagleton also refers to the nature of ideology which tends to be hidden from those involved; in these terms Ideology is not in the first place a set of doctrines but rather signifies the way people live out their roles in class-society, the values, ideas and images which tie them to their social functions and so prevent them form a true knowledge of society as a whole (Eagleton, 15). This issue will be discussed further in Chapter Two. I also decided to limit the time span of the publication dates of the children‟s literature examined to post 1960. This decision is based on the characteristics I have identified among texts with writing characters, in relation to the issues of „subjectivity‟ and „self-identity‟. The subject of this research: writing characters This thesis explores the phenomenon of writing characters in children‟s literature in the English language, post 1960. The words „writing characters‟ suggest fictional figures getting involved in some kind of writing action within the texts. These characters can be represented in more than one way. One category includes characters appearing in texts which depict them, in third-person narratives, such as Jo in Alcott‟s Little Women (1868). Another possibility is that of characters appearing in texts which involve personal writing formats, such as diaries, journals, letters, and autobiographies. Thus, these characters are represented by their „own‟ writings in the texts; a notable example is a journal writer, Cassandra, in 3 Dodie Smith‟s I Capture the Castle (1949). The reason not to limit the choice of texts for this study to one of these categories is because some texts employ more than one category of narrative style. The ultimate purpose of this project is to explore the function of the use of the images of writing as an act, in texts for young readers, in a range of different narratives. However, the narrative styles will be examined in the relevant section. The period selected as the subject of this research, post 1960, was determined through the creation of an annotated database of texts with writing characters (see Appendix), which indicates an increase in such texts after 1960. 1 The nature of the characters‟ writing action, in texts post 1960, also seems to be different from that in the earlier examples. In this thesis I hope to show that the earlier instances suggest that these texts tend to benefit from the literary functions generated by the characters‟ writing action, such as the creation of intimacy, immediacy and reality. On the other hand, the more recent texts seem to carry an ideological implication regarding writing activity, in relation to the creation of „self‟. The issue of self (subjectivity and identity) is one of the most significant issues in recent children‟s literature. The increase in the use of the image of writing activity in the texts also suggests the ideological implication concealed in this image, and an expectation that the target audiences of these texts will come to have an understanding of this message. The issue of ideology will be discussed in the following chapter. For these reasons, this research focuses on texts post 1960, although earlier examples in the history of writing characters will be mentioned, in 1 This was written originally in 2004. As my database indicates, the increase has slowed in the second half of this decade to date. I feel that this does not affect the central contention of this thesis. 4 order to present an overview of the topic of this research, and to demonstrate the different nature of the more recent texts. Methodology As I have mentioned above, this research was triggered by the topic of „writing characters‟ in children‟s literature. At a very early stage in this study, I wanted boldly to explore the phenomenon through the whole of children‟s literature, therefore this research commenced with collecting the titles of texts which included writing characters. 2 The database in the Appendix shows my attempts to collect texts including characters who write within children‟s literature. Regrettably I need to start with stating that I am aware of the limitation of its nature. In particular in the early days the number of published stories especially written by female authors was limited. For this reason, the database only reflectS published texts and the literary works which would qualify my conditions of writing characters, but did not get published inevitably do not appear in my database. My database was compiled from the results of key word searches in several catalogues of book collections, and search engines connected with publication. These include: The Book Trust‟s database, the catalogue of my local library (London Borough of Wandsworth), Catalogue Engine results from the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education collection, Book Find (database for publishing), Red Light Green (search engine for publication, which is now part of WorldCat.org., www.worldcat.org), Through the Looking Glass Children‟s Book Review (online children‟s book review 2 See Appendix.