Adventures on the isle of adolescence: forms of contemporary American girlhood

<p>This thesis examines how a revised version of the coming-of-age narrative has emerged in a range of contemporary novels, which offer feminist revisions of American girlhood through formal, thematic, and ideological departures from the traditional gendered narrative conventions of adolescenc...

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Main Author: De Vido, A
Other Authors: Pratt, L
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: 2020
Subjects:
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author De Vido, A
author2 Pratt, L
author_facet Pratt, L
De Vido, A
author_sort De Vido, A
collection OXFORD
description <p>This thesis examines how a revised version of the coming-of-age narrative has emerged in a range of contemporary novels, which offer feminist revisions of American girlhood through formal, thematic, and ideological departures from the traditional gendered narrative conventions of adolescence. Through this examination, this thesis argues that the American girl has been transformed from a flat aesthetic object in earlier iterations of the coming-of-age narrative, to a dynamic socio-political subject whose narrative centres upon the promotion of a range of feminist agendas in the contemporary novel.</p> <p>The coming-of-age narrative has chiefly explored the development of adolescent boys, charting their ‘growing up’ into a world of masculine dominance and opportunity as they mature into men. In opposition to the expansive worlds of their male counterparts, girls’ coming-of-age narratives have routinely depicted an experience of ‘growing down’ into future womanhood, where the maturation from girl to woman charts a protagonist’s personal diminishment. In this story of the female coming-of-age experience, girls learn nothing more than how to acquiesce to the normative dictates governing gender identity. </p> <p>However, this thesis argues that contemporary literature foregrounds new visions of American girlhood that explicitly destabilise the constricting conventions of the coming-of-age narrative. As a result of this generic reconfiguration, this thesis examines how the coming-of-age narrative has shifted from being an essentially conservative form that predominantly focused on the narratives of middle-class, white, heterosexual girls, to instead being used as a cultural vehicle to expand understandings of girlhood as an identity that is shaped by questions of gender, sexuality, race, disability, class, and religion in the post-1990 era.</p>
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spelling oxford-uuid:337cb0ff-6a37-4820-817d-fc2832c132282024-12-07T12:36:13ZAdventures on the isle of adolescence: forms of contemporary American girlhoodThesishttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_db06uuid:337cb0ff-6a37-4820-817d-fc2832c13228American literatureGirlhoodAdolescenceContemporary, The, in literatureGenderEnglishHyrax Deposit2020De Vido, APratt, LEmre, M<p>This thesis examines how a revised version of the coming-of-age narrative has emerged in a range of contemporary novels, which offer feminist revisions of American girlhood through formal, thematic, and ideological departures from the traditional gendered narrative conventions of adolescence. Through this examination, this thesis argues that the American girl has been transformed from a flat aesthetic object in earlier iterations of the coming-of-age narrative, to a dynamic socio-political subject whose narrative centres upon the promotion of a range of feminist agendas in the contemporary novel.</p> <p>The coming-of-age narrative has chiefly explored the development of adolescent boys, charting their ‘growing up’ into a world of masculine dominance and opportunity as they mature into men. In opposition to the expansive worlds of their male counterparts, girls’ coming-of-age narratives have routinely depicted an experience of ‘growing down’ into future womanhood, where the maturation from girl to woman charts a protagonist’s personal diminishment. In this story of the female coming-of-age experience, girls learn nothing more than how to acquiesce to the normative dictates governing gender identity. </p> <p>However, this thesis argues that contemporary literature foregrounds new visions of American girlhood that explicitly destabilise the constricting conventions of the coming-of-age narrative. As a result of this generic reconfiguration, this thesis examines how the coming-of-age narrative has shifted from being an essentially conservative form that predominantly focused on the narratives of middle-class, white, heterosexual girls, to instead being used as a cultural vehicle to expand understandings of girlhood as an identity that is shaped by questions of gender, sexuality, race, disability, class, and religion in the post-1990 era.</p>
spellingShingle American literature
Girlhood
Adolescence
Contemporary, The, in literature
Gender
De Vido, A
Adventures on the isle of adolescence: forms of contemporary American girlhood
title Adventures on the isle of adolescence: forms of contemporary American girlhood
title_full Adventures on the isle of adolescence: forms of contemporary American girlhood
title_fullStr Adventures on the isle of adolescence: forms of contemporary American girlhood
title_full_unstemmed Adventures on the isle of adolescence: forms of contemporary American girlhood
title_short Adventures on the isle of adolescence: forms of contemporary American girlhood
title_sort adventures on the isle of adolescence forms of contemporary american girlhood
topic American literature
Girlhood
Adolescence
Contemporary, The, in literature
Gender
work_keys_str_mv AT devidoa adventuresontheisleofadolescenceformsofcontemporaryamericangirlhood