• Holding Hands: Intergenerational Desire in Diana Wynne Jones's Fire and Hemlock and Ali Smith's Autumn

    Author(s):
    Vanessa Joosen (see profile)
    Date:
    2023
    Group(s):
    Children's literature
    Subject(s):
    Children's literature
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    diana wynne jones, ali smith, age, age norms, Fantasy fiction
    Permanent URL:
    https://doi.org/10.17613/gc1g-0n93
    Abstract:
    Diana Wynne Jones's Fire and Hemlock (1984) and Ali Smith's Autumn (2016) are two British novels that evoke an intense friendship between a girl and an older man. Their experimental narrative forms include a complex chronology, unreliable narrator, dream scenes, gaps, and a rich intertextual network to frame an intergenerational friendship that can be read as intergenerational desire. The experimental narratives and reflections on the fluidity of age enable Smith and Jones to evoke this controversial topic without fulling addressing it. A lot is at stake for Fire and Hemlock, given that it is addressed to young readers and there is concern that children's books could be used for grooming. Controversially, both novels locate the desire in the young girl rather than the old man and explore the agency and moments of disempowerment that the female characters experience. However, an age gap between childhood and adulthood is crucial in qualifying a relationship as “intergenerational desire,” and here, the novels’ experimental structures and fuzzy chronologies create ambiguity. In addition, the books create confusion about the nature of the attraction between the characters. They exploit the ambiguity that incomplete memories, unreliable narration, narrative gaps, metaphors, and intertextual references leave when thematizing what could be defined as friendship, kinship, love, and/or sexual attraction.
    Notes:
    I wrote this article as part of the research project Constructing Age for Young Readers (CAFYR). This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement no. 804920).
    Metadata:
    xml
    Published as:
    Journal article     Show details
    Pub. DOI:
    https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-10342127
    Publisher:
    Duke University Press
    Pub. Date:
    2023-6-8
    Journal:
    Poetics Today
    Volume:
    44
    Issue:
    1-2
    Page Range:
    131 - 156
    ISSN:
    0333-5372,1527-5507
    Status:
    Scheduled
    Last Updated:
    4 months ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved

    This item will be available for download beginning 08/09/2024


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