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By Maria Nikolajeva

Now on hand in paperback! in the past, there has been no theoretical examine of personality in kid's fiction and extremely few entire theoretical reports of literary characters often. In her newest highbrow foray, the writer of From Mythic to Linear ponders the artwork of characterization. via numerous severe views, she uncovers the basic modifications among tale ('what we're told') and discourse ('how we're told'), and punctiliously distinguishes among how those are hired in kid's fiction and more often than not fiction. yet one more masterful paintings through a number one determine in modern feedback.

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Extra resources for The Rhetoric of Character in Children’s Literature

Sample text

It is based on the belief in the child as innocent and therefore capable of conquering evil. Although this ideal child is now being interrogated by some critics (see some of the essays in McGavran 1999), it affects the ways in which child heroes are still constructed in certain text types today. In the previous section, I have already shown how mythic patterns are displaced on the romantic level. The most important difference, which allows reiteration, is the return to the initial order, the disempowerment of the hero, the reestablishment of adult authority.

We must, however, remember that the original myth is displaced in fiction and that in children's fiction, censorial filters may be imposed on the narrative. Many child char­ acters do indeed meet either a friend or an opponent of the opposite sex who initiates a turning point in the protagonist's life (Hugo in the Hugo and Josephine series; Leslie in Bridge to Terabithia; Johnny in Johnny My Friend). Campbell mentions the figure of the goddess-temptress, an evil figure seduc­ ing the hero; we encounter this figure, for instance, as the Snow Queen in Andersen's fairy tale or the White Witch in The Lion , the Witch and the Wardrobe.

The charm­ ing boy with curls wearing a tunic is purely fictional. _. 25 Since part of the traditional aesthetics of children's literature is, for didactic purposes, to pretend that texts reflect a reality and that characters are psychologically credible, it is of overall importance to take fictionality into consideration when discussing the characters' ontological status. Con­ temporary texts can destroy the illusion of reality in fiction, for instance, by means of metafictional devices. Notes 1 .

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