Monstrous losses and broken fairy tales : fantasy, loss and trauma in young adult literature

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis explores the portrayal of loss and mourning in young adult fiction by analysingthree contemporary examples, namely David Almond's Skellig, Patrick Ness's A MonsterCalls and Alexia Casale's The Bone Dragon. In each of these novels the process of anadolescent protagonist coming to terms with a major loss or change, in itself a form of loss, isexpressed and facilitated through the inclusion of a fantasy being that acts as a companion orguide within an otherwise realistic setting. While the fantasy elements draw from conventionsin children's fiction and forms such as the fairy tale, the complexity of their function in thesenovels, in which they give access to interiority by prompting the exploration of internal issuesor as externalised manifestations of internal states, is also consistent with conventions ofnarrating trauma which, according to psychoanalysis, seeks expression but cannot beconfronted directly. The thesis thus traces the way in which fantasy features in these youngadult fictions, looking at the shift away from fantasy being uncritically accepted as it is inchildren's fiction, a mode that is more consistent with magical realism, to the moreambiguous presence of fantasy in these young adult novels where fantasy can be read as anexpression of psychological subjectivity and is more consistent with the fantastic. This allowsfor the exploration of difficult subject matter in a way that still resonates with children'sfiction, expressing the process of transition into adolescence. Theory on adolescentdevelopment, loss, mourning and trauma is thus brought together with theory on fantasy andfairy tales in order to critically analyse the way these novels deliberately draw on children'sfiction but move beyond it in terms of both the themes that are explored and the sophisticateduse of fantasy to portray the internal confrontation with change and loss.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University