Date of Award
5-16-2024
Publication Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A.
Department
English Language, Literature, and Creative Writing
Keywords
Childhood and Adolescene;Children's Literature;Creative Writing;Rulebreaking;Trauma Studies
Supervisor
Nicole Markotic
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Abstract
Emerging from an interest in children’s fiction and trauma studies, this thesis investigates the role of the child in adult fiction with an emphasis on focalization and representing traumatic experiences. Often a locus of psychological exploration and philosophical inquiry, the figure of the child in literature frequently manifests in works to provide moralistic lessons or warnings of the faults and failures of society. By using specific internal focalization, Rugburn creates a skewed perspective in which the child and adolescent characters have a reduced awareness of circumstances and situations around them, often containing great threats to their personal safety. Rugburn asserts the limited perspective of child protagonists, here focusing on limited knowledge and experience, to represent and manifest traumatic circumstances, as explored by scholars such as Cathy Caruth who identify trauma as ‘unknowable’. Rugburn, as a collection, functionally represents the isolating and powerless experience of traumatic circumstances. Presented through fictional stories that privilege the perspective of the child through internal focalization (Genette) Rugburn communicates a simultaneous array of nuanced circumstances and social dynamics while maintaining its goal to represent that which is unrepresentable. By portraying the everyday risk faced by children in a perilous adult world, Rugburn explores literary traumas by focusing on the disempowerment and alienation experienced by each of the protagonists.
Recommended Citation
Jordan, Mackenzie, "Rugburn" (2024). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 9413.
https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/etd/9413