Female heroes in young adult fantasy fiction : reframing myths of adolescent girlhood / Leah Phillips.

Author
Phillips, Leah [Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Published/​Created
  • London, UK ; New York, NY : Bloomsbury Academic, 2023.
  • ©2023
Description
xxi, 189 pages ; 23 cm.

Details

Subject(s)
Series
Library of gender and popular culture [More in this series]
Summary note
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.
Bibliographic references
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents
  • The hero's prize : the myth of 'successful' adolescent girlhood
  • Mythopoeic YA : bringing new worlds into being to conceive new ways of being
  • Disrupting the myth : Alanna becomes a warrior-maiden
  • Breaking the mirror : Cinder(ella) is a cyborg
  • Engendering a new myth : Daine is 'of the people'
  • Being-hero : relational, embodied, procreative selfhood.
ISBN
  • 9781350119338 (hardcover)
  • 1350119334 (hardcover)
OCLC
1362490600
Statement on responsible collection description
Princeton University Library aims to describe library materials in a manner that is respectful to the individuals and communities who create, use, and are represented in the collections we manage. Read more...
Other views
Staff view

Supplementary Information