Leah Phillips

Female Heroes in Young Adult Fantasy Fiction (eBook, PDF)

Reframing Myths of Adolescent Girlhood

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

The heroic romance is one of the West's most enduring narratives, found everywhere, from religion and myth to blockbuster films and young adult literature. Within this story, adolescent girls are not, and cannot be, the heroes. They are, at best, the hero's bride, a prize he wins for slaying monsters. Crucially, although the girl's exclusion from heroic selfhood affects all girls, it does not do so equally- whiteness and able-bodiedness are taken as markers of heightened, fantasy femininity.

Female Heroes in Young Adult Fantasy Fiction explores how the young female-heroes of mythopoeic YA, a Tolkienian-inspired genre drawing on myth's world-creating power and YA's liminal potential, disrupt the conventional heroic narrative. These heroes, such as Tamora Pierce's Alanna the Lioness, Daine the Wildmage, and Marissa Meyer's Cinder and Iko, offer a model of being-hero, an embodied way of living and being in this world that disrupts the typical hero's violent hierarchy, isolating individuality, and erasure of difference. In doing so, they push the boundaries of what it means to be a hero, a girl, and even human.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury UK eBooks
• Seitenzahl: 320
• Erscheinungstermin: 26. Januar 2023
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781350119314
• Artikelnr.: 67269781

Autorenporträt

Leah Phillips is a Senior Lecturer in English at Plymouth Marjon University, UK. Her research focuses on YA, representations of adolescent girlhood, and genres of YA, especially fantasy. She is the founder and current President of the YA Studies Association (YASA) and sits on the Editorial Board for the International Journal of Young Adult Literature (IJYAL) in which she co-edits "Ploughing the Field", a standing article on disrupting norms and expectations within YA and YA Studies.