Description
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.Author: Leah Phillips
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published: 02/23/2023
Pages: 320
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.87lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.50d
ISBN13: 9781350119338
ISBN10: 1350119334
BISAC Categories:
- Literary Criticism | Children's & Young Adult Literature
- Social Science | Popular Culture
- Social Science | Women's Studies
About the Author
Leah Phillips is Senior Lecturer in English at Plymouth Marjon University, UK. She is the Programme Lead for the BA English and MA Literature for Children and Young Adults and is the President and Founder of the YA Studies Association (YASA).