Fantasy and the Real World in British Children's Literature: The Power of Story

ISBN-13: 9781138547858 / Angielski / Miękka / 2018 / 176 str.

Caroline Webb

Opis

This book examines the children’s fantasies of three extraordinary British writers - J.K. Rowling, Diana Wynne Jones, and Terry Pratchett - and investigates their use of narrative strategies to engage children in reading and educate them into becoming more mature readers and indeed individuals. The author argues that these writers do not deploy fantasy either as mere escapism or as a mask for didactic moralising, but instead demonstrate the ethical power of fantasy and the imagination itself in real-world interaction. She demonstrates how, in very different ways, they introduce readers to the unpleasantness of the real world and equip them with the strategies with which to survive it.

Spis treści

Introduction  1. Harry Potter and Tiffany Aching  2. The Case of Heroic Fantasy  3. Ontologies of the Wainscot  4. Representing the Witch  5. Resisting "Destinarianism"  Conclusion

O autorze

Caroline Webb is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She has published articles on a range of works by modernist and postmodernist authors and by writers of children’s fantasy. She is currently serving as Secretary of the Australasian Children's Literature Association for Research.