Crossover Literature and Abjection: Geraldine McCaughrean's The White Darkness

Details

Serval ID
serval:BIB_3BDF8C878CC5
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Title
Crossover Literature and Abjection: Geraldine McCaughrean's The White Darkness
Journal
Children's Literature in Education
Author(s)
Falconer R.
ISSN
0045-6713
Publication state
Published
Issued date
03/2007
Volume
38
Number
1
Pages
35-44
Language
english
Abstract
Abstract:
This article provides a close reading of Geraldine McCaughrean's award-winning novel, The White Darkness. It argues that this is a key text in the increasing debate about 'crossover' literature. Whereas, traditionally, adolescent books were seen to offer compensatory fantasies to the adolescent reader, McCaughrean's text goes beyond this, exploring adolescence in deeper terms: not simply as an age-defined period but as a time when the traditional coordinates of the self are thrown into crisis, or become destabilized (as an 'open psychic structure', as Kristeva puts it). Adopting such a psychoanalytical approach, it is argued, we can begin to understand this book's appeal (and others like it) to adolescent and adult alike; that is, it stages a shift from an imaginary identification with a stable self to a more realistic, albeit less secure recognition of the flimsiness of identity. The white wastes of Antarctica provide the perfect backdrop for this confrontation with the ungraspable Real.
Keywords
Geraldine McCaughrean, Crossover literature, Adolescent, Abjection, Julia Kristeva, R.F. Scott, Captain Lawrence Oates, Polar expedition, Fantasy literature
Create date
20/01/2012 15:20
Last modification date
31/03/2022 7:16
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