'I wouldn't say that' : finding a young adult, female voice in a Queensland mining town

This is a practice-led project consisting of a Young Adult novel, Open Cut, and an exegesis, 'I Wouldn't Say That': Finding a Young Adult, Female Voice in a Queensland Mining Town. The thesis investigates the use of first person narration in order to create an immediate engaging, realist Young Adult Fiction. The research design is bound by a feminist interpretative paradigm. The methodology employed is practice-led, auto-ethnography, and participant observation. Particular characteristics of first person narration used in Australian Young Adult Fiction are identified in an analysis of Dust, by Christine Bongers, and Jasper Jones, by Craig Silvey. The exegesis also contains a reflection on the researcher's creative work, and the process used to draft, edit, plot and construct the novel. The research contributes to knowledge in the field of Young Adult Literature because it offers a graphic portrayal of an Australian mining town that has not been heard before.

La presencia del "flâneur" en "Tetralogie der Erinnerung" de Dieter Forte

Reflejando la ciudad moderna, el flâneur se encuentra atrapado entre dos tiempos: el presente, que se transforma continuamente, y el pasado, que permanece en forma de vestigios materiales. Desde su aparición en la literatura, la trayectoria del flâneur va ligada a los principales cambios históricos, sociales y culturales, que se plasman en distintas texturas urbanas. En todas ellas ejerce una función de nexo entre la ciudad antigua y la nueva que se superpone. El objeto del presente artículo es analizar la evolución de esta figura histórico y literaria como punto de partida para interpretar la obra en prosa Tetralogie der Erinnerung (1992-2004) de Dieter Forte.

Shifting the "vantage point" to women: re-conceptualizing magical realism and trauma

Magical realist literature and trauma are often understood in terms of nationalist and historical paradigms in ways that expose a phallocentric bias. With the convergence of magical realist scholarship and trauma studies—in response to the centrality of trauma to magical realist fiction—this phallocentric bias has in many cases been consolidated. This article attends to magical realist trauma narratives by women, undertaking case studies of the UK writer Ali Smith’s Hotel World and the Filipino-Australian writer Merlinda Bobis’s Fish-Hair Woman. Following the groundbreaking work of the feminist historian Joan Kelly, who demonstrated that adopting a woman’s “vantage point” revolutionizes our understanding of history, this article argues that investigating magical realism and trauma from the “vantage point” of women writers leads to a reconceptualization of what constitutes trauma and a redefinition of magical realist fiction.

The ‘Is’ of Fiction Elgin/Goodman Fictionalism : fictions in art and science

Cet essai a pour objet le rôle de la notion de fiction dans les domaines de l’art et de la science. Essentiellement, je soutiens que « fiction » dans ce contexte est « a category mistake » (concept versus genre) et je crois que cet essai peut réussir à « cuire du pain philosophique » en dévoilant une dispute verbale. Je suggère donc de clore un débat philosophique dans son intégralité. Je présente un exposé du style de fictionnalisme abordé par Catherine Z. Elgin et Nelson Goodman (que ce soit dans le contexte des arts ou des sciences, nous parvenons à la compréhension grâce à des fictions sous formes de « vérités non littérales ») et j’explore le concept de la fiction. Je soutiens que les représentations (textes descriptifs de toutes sortes, incluant les modèles) sont constituées d’éléments fictionnels et d’éléments facettés (à l’exception de la version idéale possible ou impossible, c’est-à-dire dans l’esprit de Dieu, qui n’inclurait que les facettes.) La compréhension ne peut provenir de la fiction, mais plutôt d’éléments facettés ordonnés de manière à créer une compréhension qui conduit généralement à des prédictions, des explications et des manipulations. Je définis les facettes comme ayant des caractéristiques organisées, alors que les fictions ont des caractéristiques désorganisées. La fiction dans son intégralité est donc, par définition, l’expression du néant (of nothing), ou en matière de langues idéales (mathématiques), l’expression de contradiction. Les fictions et les facettes relèvent des représentations qui sont elles-mêmes primitives. Les textes descriptifs sont donc fictionnels par degré. Les récits qui sont très fictionnels ont une certaine valeur (souvent ludique) mais contiennent toujours au moins une facette. En fin de compte, toutes les activités représentationnelles devraient être considérées irréelles, incomplètes, bien que parfois connectées à la réalité, c’est-à-dire, prises entre une description réaliste facettée et une fiction dans son intégralité.

Raising the subject : ideology in children's fiction

This thesis is concerned to reveal, by means of textual analysis, ideologies connected to human subjectivity within eight contemporary novels for 'children' . The analyses draw upon the work of Macherey, Eagleton, Jameson and Bakhtin among others. The texts discussed cover more than two decades, from 1955 to 1977. The first, Philippa Pearce's Minnow on the Say, attempts to reconcile a traditional form of subjectivity with a less hierarchic and mare open type. Lyotard's account of customary and scientific knowledge, and Said's of affiliation ion , are the basis for discussion here. Susan Cooper's sequence The Dark is Rising grounds humanism in a mythic British past. Within these texts the problem of situating the subject within a wider social framework is linked to one of nationalism. Her novels are fantasies, and provide an opportunity for a discussion of a non-realist form and its ideological implications, Todorov's account of the fantastic as a genre is a reference—point in this analysis. Jane Garden’s Bilge water presents a discontinuous subject—in-process. Her story is told by a first— person narrator, situated within a framed narrative. Through its themes and structures the text interrogates its central character's project of subjectivity as perfectible, centered and continuous, and finds it untenable. In Russell Hagan’s The House and his Child the possibility of self-determination within language as discourse is of central concern. The tin mice, who are hollow, echo in their persons the text's interest in the distinction between inside and outside, the difference which Lacanian theory posits as essential for an accession to subjectivity- Hoban's work gives an account of the postmodern subject, and calls into question the subjectivities assumed in Pearce's and Cooper's texts.

Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie's Fiction

Kluwick breaks new ground in this book, moving away from Rushdie studies that focus on his status as postcolonial or postmodern, and instead considering the significance of magic realism in his fiction. Rushdie’s magic realism, in fact, lies at the heart of his engagement with the post/colonial. In a departure from conventional descriptions of magic realism—based primarily on the Latin-American tradition—Kluwick here proposes an alternative definition, allowing for a more accurate description of the form. She argues that it is disharmony, rather than harmony, that is decisive: that the incompatibility of the realist and the supernatural needs to be recognized as a driving force in Rushdie’s fiction. In its rigorous analysis of this Rushdian magic realism, this book considers the entire corpus—Midnight’s Children, Shame, The Satanic Verses, The Moor’s Last Sigh, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Shalimar the Clown, and The Enchantress of Florence. This study is the first of its kind to do so.

Children's Fiction About 9/11: Ethnic, Heroic and National Identities

In this study, Lampert examines how cultural identities are constructed within fictional texts for young people written about the attacks on the Twin Towers. It identifi es three significant identity categories encoded in 9/11 books for children:ethnic identities, national identities, and heroic identities,arguing that the identities formed within the selected children’s texts are in flux, privileging performances of identities that are contingent on post-9/11 politics. Looking at texts including picture books, young adult fiction, and a selection of DC Comics, Lampert finds in post-9/11 children’s literature a co-mingling of xenophobia and tolerance; a binaried competition between good and evil and global harmony and national insularity; and a lauding of both the commonplace hero and the super-human. The shifting identities evident in texts that are being produced for children about 9/11 offer implicit and explicit accounts of what constitutes good citizenship, loyalty to nation and community, and desirable attributes in a Western post-9/11 context. This book makes an original contribution to the field of children’s literature by providing a focused and sustained analysis of how texts for children about 9/11 contribute to formations of identity in these complex times of cultural unease and global unrest.

Gender Dilemmas in Children's Fiction

Gender Dilemmas in Children's Fiction examines how fictional texts – picture books, novels, and films – produced for children and young adults are responding to the tensions and dilemmas that arise from new gender relations and sexual differences. The book discusses a diverse range of international children's fiction published between 1990 and 2008. Some of the key dilemmas that emerge are around the texts' treatment of romance, beauty, cyberbodies, queer, and comedy.

Girl in the Shadows and resilience and coping strategies in contemporary young adult fiction

The novel manuscript Girl in the Shadows tells the story of two teenage girls whose friendship, safety and sanity are pushed to the limits when an unexplained phenomenon invades their lives. Sixteen-year-old Tash has everything a teenage girl could want: good looks, brains and freedom from her busy parents. But when she looks into her mirror, a stranger’s face stares back at her. Her best friend Mal believes it’s an evil spirit and enters the world of the supernatural to find answers. But spell books and ouija boards cannot fix a problem that comes from deep within the soul. It will take a journey to the edge of madness for Tash to face the truth inside her heart and see the evil that lurks in her home. And Mal’s love and courage to pull her back into life. The exegesis examines resilience and coping strategies in adolescence, in particular, the relationship of trauma to brain development in children and teenagers. It draws on recent discoveries in neuroscience and psychology to provide a framework to examine the role of coping strategies in building resilience. Within this broader context, it analyses two works of contemporary young adult fiction, Freaky Green Eyes by Joyce Carol Oates and Sonya Hartnett’s Surrender, their use of the split persona as a coping mechanism within young adult fiction and the potential of young adult literature as a tool to help build resilience in teen readers.

Queering cyberspace : fan fiction communities as spaces for expressing and exploring sexuality

The social construction of sexuality over the past one hundred and fifty years has created a dichotomy between heterosexual and non-heterosexual identities that essentially positions the former as “normal” and the latter as deviant. Even Kinsey’s and others’ work on the continuum of sexualities did little to alter the predominantly heterosexist perception of the non-heterosexual as “other” (Kinsey, Pomeroy and Martin 2007; Esterberg 2006; Franceour and Noonan 2007). Some political action and academic work is beginning to challenge such perceptions. Even some avenues of social interaction, such as the recent proliferation of online communities, may also challenge such views, or at least contribute to their being rethought in some ways. This chapter explores a specific kind of online community devoted to fan fiction, specifically homoerotic – or what is known colloquially as “slash” – fan fiction. Fan fiction is fiction, published on the internet, and written by fans of well-known books and television shows, using the characters to create new and varied plots. “Slash” refers to the pairing of two of the male characters in a romantic relationship, and the term comes from the punctuation mark dividing the named pair as, for example, Spock/Kirk from the Star Trek television series. Although there are some slash fan-fiction stories devoted to female-female relationships – called “femmeslash” – the term “slash” generally refers to male-male relationships, and will be utilized throughout this chapter, given that the research discussed focuses on communities centered around one such male pairing.

Introducing Mr Perky : subverting the fantasy trope of immortality in contemporary speculative fiction

The Tide Lords series of fantasy novels set out to examine the issue of immortality. Its purpose was to look at the desirability of immortality, specifically why people actively seek it. It was meant to examine the practicality of immortality, specifically — having got there, what does one do to pass the time with eternity to fill? I also wished to examine the notion of true immortality — immortals who could not be killed. What I did not anticipate when embarking upon this series, and what did not become apparent until after the series had been sold to two major publishing houses in Australia and the US, was the strength of the immortality tropes. This series was intended to fly in the face of these tropes, but confronted with the reality of such a work, the Australian publishers baulked at the ideas presented, requesting the series be re-written with the tropes taken into consideration. They wanted immortals who could die, mortals who wanted to be immortal. And a hero with a sense of humour. This exegesis aims to explore where these tropes originated. It will also discuss the ways I negotiated a way around the tropes, and was eventually able to please the publishers by appearing to adhere to the tropes, while still staying true to the story I wanted to tell. As such, this discussion is, in part, an analysis of how an author negotiates the tensions around writing within a genre while trying to innovate within it.