Colonizing the fantastic: Reading Stephenie Meyer’s Breaking Dawn as all-in-one text

As the life on the planet gets more and more complicated due to the rapid changes in the socio-cultural paradigms, the task of boundary drawing, categorization or classification appears as a hazardous task. Likewise, while Stephenie Meyer’s The Twilight series is generally classified as fantasy, all...

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Main Author: Baysar Tanıyan
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Literacy Trek 2020-06-01
Series:Literacy Trek
Subjects:
Online Access:https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/literacytrek/issue/55072/638780
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author Baysar Tanıyan
author_facet Baysar Tanıyan
author_sort Baysar Tanıyan
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description As the life on the planet gets more and more complicated due to the rapid changes in the socio-cultural paradigms, the task of boundary drawing, categorization or classification appears as a hazardous task. Likewise, while Stephenie Meyer’s The Twilight series is generally classified as fantasy, all four novels in the series resist such a simplified classification when tested with the key ideas of Todorov’s insistence on hesitation, Rosemary Jackson’s perception of the fantastic as a deconstructive mode or Rabkin’s idea of fantastic effect. The article will argue that the last novel of the series, Breaking Dawn, exploits various genres while trying to remain in the realm of fantasy. These genres may be listed as romance, erotic romance, uncanny (or the fantastic), epic and, finally, the fairy tale. The novel surpasses the drawn boundaries of different genres without committing itself to any of them and, therefore, the text becomes what might be called an ‘all-in-one text’. It is not just a singular fantastic text but a pluralistic all-in-one text enabling the reader to experience different reading pleasures in one text, which might provide valuable ideas to better understand the general spirit of the postmodern age and the consumerist habits of postmodern readers.
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spelling doaj.art-32b08d372bfb47f29eb9419cf519d1402023-02-15T16:19:57ZengLiteracy TrekLiteracy Trek2602-37682602-37682020-06-01617489Colonizing the fantastic: Reading Stephenie Meyer’s Breaking Dawn as all-in-one textBaysar Tanıyan0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2843-8835Pamukkale UniversityAs the life on the planet gets more and more complicated due to the rapid changes in the socio-cultural paradigms, the task of boundary drawing, categorization or classification appears as a hazardous task. Likewise, while Stephenie Meyer’s The Twilight series is generally classified as fantasy, all four novels in the series resist such a simplified classification when tested with the key ideas of Todorov’s insistence on hesitation, Rosemary Jackson’s perception of the fantastic as a deconstructive mode or Rabkin’s idea of fantastic effect. The article will argue that the last novel of the series, Breaking Dawn, exploits various genres while trying to remain in the realm of fantasy. These genres may be listed as romance, erotic romance, uncanny (or the fantastic), epic and, finally, the fairy tale. The novel surpasses the drawn boundaries of different genres without committing itself to any of them and, therefore, the text becomes what might be called an ‘all-in-one text’. It is not just a singular fantastic text but a pluralistic all-in-one text enabling the reader to experience different reading pleasures in one text, which might provide valuable ideas to better understand the general spirit of the postmodern age and the consumerist habits of postmodern readers.https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/literacytrek/issue/55072/638780fantastic fictionboundary crossingpopular fictionbreaking dawntwilight
spellingShingle Baysar Tanıyan
Colonizing the fantastic: Reading Stephenie Meyer’s Breaking Dawn as all-in-one text
Literacy Trek
fantastic fiction
boundary crossing
popular fiction
breaking dawn
twilight
title Colonizing the fantastic: Reading Stephenie Meyer’s Breaking Dawn as all-in-one text
title_full Colonizing the fantastic: Reading Stephenie Meyer’s Breaking Dawn as all-in-one text
title_fullStr Colonizing the fantastic: Reading Stephenie Meyer’s Breaking Dawn as all-in-one text
title_full_unstemmed Colonizing the fantastic: Reading Stephenie Meyer’s Breaking Dawn as all-in-one text
title_short Colonizing the fantastic: Reading Stephenie Meyer’s Breaking Dawn as all-in-one text
title_sort colonizing the fantastic reading stephenie meyer s breaking dawn as all in one text
topic fantastic fiction
boundary crossing
popular fiction
breaking dawn
twilight
url https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/literacytrek/issue/55072/638780
work_keys_str_mv AT baysartanıyan colonizingthefantasticreadingstepheniemeyersbreakingdawnasallinonetext