Literature

15 pages, 1078 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Side-Eye from the Side Kid: Child Sidekicks as Disciplinary Tools in Contemporary Video Games

by Emma Joy Reay

Literature 2024, 4(4), 247-261; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4040018 - 31 Oct 2024

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In this article, I analyse the function of supporting child-characters in contemporary videogames. I integrate Stephen Zimmerly’s typology of sidekicks in Young Adult literature with critical writing on the ‘Daddening’ of videogames, a coinage that refers to the rise in the number of videogames that centre on the filial bond between a father figure and a child. Bringing these ideas into conversation with each other allows me to expand Zimmerly’s sidekick typology to include the ‘Ludic Gateway’, the ‘Morality Certificate’, and the ‘Disciplinary Tool’. I explore each category in greater depth using two case studies: The Last of Us series (2012; 2014; 2020) and the God of War series (2008; 2018; 2022). These commercially successful, critically acclaimed franchises rely on young deuteragonists to humanize and redeem the gruff, aggressive, violent male player character. Furthermore, the child sidekicks also serve to regulate the player’s in-game behaviour by way of a parasocial relationship. Using a close reading approach, I demonstrate that the supporting child-characters function as meta-critical devices to discipline gaming communities and the video game medium itself. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Constructions of Childhood(s) in Fiction and Nonfiction for Children)

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13 pages, 257 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Thwarting the Tyranny of Fathers: Women in Nicole Krauss’s Great House and the Creative Transmission of Traumatic Memory

by Sophie Vallas

Literature 2024, 4(4), 234-246; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4040017 - 5 Oct 2024

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Abstract

With Great House (2010), Nicole Krauss offers a choral novel that interweaves the lives of several characters loosely connected by a huge, wooden desk that one of them relentlessly chases around the world. A possible symbol of the memory of the Second World War Jewish genocide transmitted to younger generations, the desk powerfully materializes transmission in its potentially traumatic, obsessional, and violent dimensions. This essay deals with the way first- and second-generation women, in the novel, develop ingenious, creative but also uncompromising responses to the inescapable duty of remembrance. While the dominating male characters freeze memory in timeless, petrified representations, these female writers expose its terrible necessity while hiding nothing of the damages memory causes to witnesses and descendants. They claim a right of inventory and use the desk as an echo-chamber reflecting both the suffering voices of children and the dark presence of defaulting fathers and failing mothers, thus allowing for a new generation to be born with a more bearable heritage. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Memory and Women’s Studies: Between Trauma and Positivity)

20 pages, 9303 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Reconstructing Childhood via Reimagined Memories: Life Writing in Children’s Literature

by Emma-Louise Silva

Literature 2024, 4(4), 214-233; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4040016 - 27 Sep 2024

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Abstract

For authors who revisit their experiences of childhood to write stories for young readers, imaginatively drawing on memories plays a prominent role in the creative process. Whereas connections between memories and narratives have featured in literary studies and children’s literature studies, the unfolding of negotiations between memory and imagination as authors create narratives of life writing is underexplored. This article examines how negotiations of memory and imagination unfold on paper during the writing processes for Roald Dahl’s Boy (1984), David Almond’s Counting Stars (2000), and Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming (2014). While positioning itself in the field of cognitive literary studies and the archival study of creative writing processes, this article aims to generate insights on the reconstructive approach to memory, which considers episodic remembering as imagining the past. By transposing the study of the dynamics of writing processes, or genetic criticism, to children’s literature, I explore notes, mindmaps, manuscripts, and typescripts held at the archives of Dahl, Almond, and Woodson to chart how they imaginatively incorporate memories of their youth into their life writing. As such, this research informs understandings of the narrative genesis of the authors’ works, while drawing on the manifestations of their literary creativity in an attempt to broaden knowledge regarding memory and imagination. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Constructions of Childhood(s) in Fiction and Nonfiction for Children)

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Literature, Volume 4, Issue 4 (December 2024) – 3 articles

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