Disturbing the Universe: Power and Repression in Adolescent LiteratureUniversity of Iowa Press, 2000 - 207 pages The Young Adult novel is ordinarily characterized as a coming-of-age story, in which the narrative revolves around the individual growth and maturation of a character, but Roberta Trites expands this notion by chronicling the dynamics of power and repression that weave their way through YA books. Characters in these novels must learn to negotiate the levels of power that exist in the myriad social institutions within which they function, including family, church, government, and school. Trites argues that the development of the genre over the past thirty years is an outgrowth of postmodernism, since YA novels are, by definition, texts that interrogate the social construction of individuals. Drawing on such nineteenth-century precursors as Little Women and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Disturbing the Universe demonstrates how important it is to employ poststructuralist methodologies in analyzing adolescent literature, both in critical studies and in the classroom. Among the twentieth-century authors discussed are Blume, Hamilton, Hinton, Le Guin, L'Engle, and Zindel. Trites' work has applications for a broad range of readers, including scholars of children's literature and theorists of post-modernity as well as librarians and secondary-school teachers. Disturbing the Universe: Power and Repression in Adolescent Literature by Roberta Seelinger Trites is the winner of the 2002 Children's Literature Association's Book Award. The award is given annually in order to promote and recognize outstanding contributions to children's literature, history, scholarship, and criticisim; it is one of the highest academic honors that can accrue to an author of children's literary criticism. |
From inside the book
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... David Cop- perfield , Sons and Lovers , and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as examples of Anglophone Bildungsromane . One glaring problem with Buckley's definition ( and Dilthey's and Borcherdt's and Tennyson's ) is how ...
... David uses racial politics to manipulate Talley . ) After the conflict is resolved - Talley , in this case , quits dating David and starts to date instead a classmate who respects her- the protagonist ends up sadder and wiser , and the ...
... David and Della . See Zindel , Paul David and Jonathan . See Voigt , Cynthia David Copperfield . See Dickens , Charles death , ix - x , xii , xiii , 3 , 16 , 20 , 104– 105 , 117-141 , 142–144 , 159n , 16on , 161n ; being - towards ...
Contents
Maybe that is writing changing things around and disguising the forreal | 54 |
Chapter 4 | 84 |
Chapter 5 | 117 |
Copyright | |
3 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Disturbing the Universe: Power and Repression in Adolescent Literature Roberta S. Trites Limited preview - 1998 |
Disturbing the Universe: Power and Repression in Adolescent Literature Roberta S. Trites No preview available - 2004 |