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Literary Conceptualizations of Growth: Metaphors and cognition in adolescent literature PDF

173 Pages·2014·0.86 MB·English
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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)

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Literary Conceptualizations of Growth explores those processes through which maturation is represented in adolescent literature by examining how concepts of growth manifest themselves in adolescent literature and by interrogating how the concept of growth structures scholars’ ability to think abou
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