Literary Conceptualizations of Growth: Metaphors and cognition in adolescent literature

173 Pages·2014·0.86 MB·English

by  Roberta Trites

Literary Conceptualizations of Growth
Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition (CLCC)
The overarching aim of the CLCC series is to promote new theoretical approaches in
the realm of children’s literature research on the one hand, and to emphasize a non-
Anglo-American focus, bringing in exciting research from other areas, on the other
hand. In addition, the new book series will present research from many linguistic areas
to an international audience, reinforce interaction between research conducted in many
different languages and present high standard research on the basis of secondary sources
in a number of languages and based in a variety of research traditions. Basically the
series should encourage a cross- and interdisciplinary approach on the basis of literary
studies, media studies, comparative studies, reception studies, literacy studies, cognitive
studies, and linguistics. The series includes monographs and essay collections which
are international in scope and intend to stimulate innovative research with a focus
on children’s literature (including other media), children’s culture and cognition, thus
encouraging interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research in this expanding field.
For an overview of all books published in this series, please see
http://benjamins.com/catalog/clcc
Editors
Nina Christensen Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer
Aarhus University University of Tübingen
Elina Druker Maria Nikolajeva
Stockholm University University of Cambridge
Editorial Board
Sandra Beckett Kenneth Kidd Karen Sanchez-Eppler Astrid Surmatz
Brock University University of Florida Amherst College University of Amsterdam
Karen Coats Maria Lassén-Seger Lisa Sainsbury Kestutis Urba
Illinois State University Åbo Academy Roehampton University Vilnius University
Nina Goga Jörg Meibauer Cecilia Silva-Díaz David Whitley
University College Bergen University of Mainz Autonomous University University of Cambridge
Vanessa Joosen Katharina J. Rohlfing of Barcelona
University of Antwerp University of Bielefeld
Volume 2
Literary Conceptualizations of Growth. Metaphors and cognition in adolescent
literature
by Roberta Trites
Literary Conceptualizations
of Growth
Metaphors and cognition in adolescent literature
Roberta Trites
Illinois State University
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8
the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Trites, Roberta Seelinger, 1962-
Literary Conceptualizations of Growth : Metaphors and cognition in adolescent literature
/ Roberta Seelinger Trites.
p. cm. (Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition, issn 2212-9006 ; v. 2)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Discourse analysis, Literary. 2. Literature--Psychology. 3. Psychology and literature.
4.  Metaphor. 5. Cognition. I. Title.
P302.5.T75 2014
809’.89283--dc23 2014011669
isbn 978 90 272 0156 0 (Hb ; alk. paper)
isbn 978 90 272 6996 6 (Eb)
© 2014 – John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa
I dedicate this book to all of my Ph.D. students,
without whom this work would not have been possible.

Table of contents
Introduction 1
Cognitive linguistics 2
Brain science 5
Growth 7
Acknowledgements 9
Chapter 1
Growth, cognitive linguistics, and embodied metaphors 11
Background and review of the literature 11
Cognitive linguistics and embodied metaphors 14
Embodied metaphors of growth in literary criticism 20
Fiction as an example: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 28
Conclusion 32
Chapter 2
Sequences, scripts, and stereotypical knowledge 35
Sequences, scripts, and stereotypical knowledge 36
Scripts and stereotypical knowledge in American Born Chinese 40
Memory, perception, emotion and Margaret Mahy’s Memory 42
Causality, scripts, and Thirteen Reasons Why 46
Conclusion 53
Chapter 3 55
Blending and cultural narratives 55
Blending 56
Blending in a cool moonlight 57
Cultural narratives as cognitive blends 59
Cultural narratives and embodied metaphors in Shusterman’s Unwind 63
Primary and complex metaphors, blending, and cultural narratives in
Njunjul the Sun 71
Conclusion 78
viii Literary Conceptualizations of Growth
Chapter 4
A case study: Cultural narratives and the “Pixar Maturity Formula” 81
Maturity and causality 83
The Pixar maturity formula 85
Up and Being-towards-death 88
Toy Story 3, separation anxiety, and control 90
Conclusion 94
Chapter 5
Epistemology, ontology, and the philosophy of experientialism 97
Embodied reason in David Almond’s novels 99
The cognitive unconscious and metaphorical thought 102
The ontology and epistemology of racial construction 108
Categorization, and epistemology: The Absolutely True Diary of
a Part-Time Indian 112
The ontology of racism: 47 116
Conclusion 118
Chapter 6
The hegemony of growth in adolescent literature 123
Growth: The archaeology of a metaphor 124
Growth and its historical conceptualizations 126
The implications of growth metaphors 133
A historiography of growth metaphors 134
Growth and the historiography of literature for youth 138
Afterword 147
References 149
Index 159
Introduction
Why is growth such a prevalent concept in adolescent literature? This project,
Literary Conceptualizations of Growth: Metaphor and Cognition in Adolescent
Literature, grew out of questions about adolescent maturation left unanswered in
my earlier work on adolescent literature. In Disturbing the Universe: Power and
Repression in Adolescent Literature, I argue that adolescent literature isn’t as much
about growth as it is about teaching adolescents either to conform to societal pres-
sures or die (Trites 2000). That is, although characters like Holden Caulfield ini-
tially appear to be iconoclasts and rebels who refuse to conform, by the end of most
novels about adolescents — including Catcher in the Rye — the rebellious protago-
nist has either “matured” into some level of conformity or has died. (Two characters
in S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, Johnny and Dallas, provide examples of the latter
case.) In other words, adolescent literature initially appears to empower teenagers,
but empowerment proves to be something of an illusion in many novels because so
frequently, teenaged characters demonstrate to teen readers that the only true form
of empowerment comes from growing up and leaving adolescence behind. It’s cer-
tainly logical that we must all mature, but the message to young readers is a consis-
tent one: “there is something wrong with your subject position as a teenager. Grow
up and become someone else.” In that sense, adolescent literature is the only genre
written with the subversive ideological intent of undermining the reader’s subject
position. (As a counter-example, think of women’s literature — which certainly is
not written for the purpose of teaching women how to outgrow being women!)
But in Disturbing the Universe, I did not ask the question why? That is, why
do authors focus stories so frequently on adolescent characters who grow? And
why do literary critics spend so much time analyzing that growth — frequent-
ly relying themselves on metaphors of growth in their own analyses? Literary
Conceptualizations of Growth posits that perhaps our own cognitive structures are
responsible for the pervasiveness of growth as both a metaphor and a narrative
pattern in adolescent literature. The purpose of this book is therefore not to de-
fine adolescent literature or examine the Young Adult (YA) novel as a genre; that
work has been undertaken by, among others, Nikolajeva (1996, 2000), McCallum
(1999), Cadden (2000), Trites (2000, 2007), Coats (2004), and Waller (2009).
Rather, the purpose of this book is to examine how growth is conceptualized in
literature and in literary criticism. In order to understand the cause(s) and effect(s)