Female Heroes in Young Adult Fantasy Fiction: Reframing Myths of Adolescent Girlhood

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Leah Phillips (Plymouth Marjon University, UK) Claire Nally (Northumbria University UK)

Female Heroes in Young Adult Fantasy Fiction

Reframing Myths of Adolescent Girlhood

Leah Phillips (Plymouth Marjon University, UK), Claire Nally (Northumbria University UK), Senior Lecturer Angela Smith (University of Sunderland UK)

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English

Bloomsbury Academic
22 August 2024

Children's literature studies: general; Popular culture; Gender studies: women

Series: Library of Gender and Popular Culture

The heroic romance is one of the West’s most enduring narratives, found everywhere, from religion and myth to blockbuster films and young adult literature. Within this story, adolescent girls are not, and cannot be, the heroes. They are, at best, the hero’s bride, a prize he wins for slaying monsters. Crucially, although the girl’s exclusion from heroic selfhood affects all girls, it does not do so equally— whiteness and able-bodiedness are taken as markers of heightened, fantasy femininity.

Female Heroes in Young Adult Fantasy Fiction explores how the young female-heroes of mythopoeic YA, a Tolkienian-inspired genre drawing on myth’s world-creating power and YA’s liminal potential, disrupt the conventional heroic narrative. These heroes, such as Tamora Pierce's Alanna the Lioness, Daine the Wildmage, and Marissa Meyer's Cinder and Iko, offer a model of being-hero, an embodied way of living and being in this world that disrupts the typical hero’s violent hierarchy, isolating individuality, and erasure of difference. In doing so, they push the boundaries of what it means to be a hero, a girl, and even human.

By: Leah Phillips (Plymouth Marjon University UK)
Edited by: Claire Nally (Northumbria University UK), Senior Lecturer Angela Smith (University of Sunderland UK)
Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 138mm, Spine: 12mm
Weight: 260g
ISBN: 9781350194236
ISBN 10: 1350194239
Series: Library of Gender and Popular Culture
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 22 August 2024
Audience: College/higher education , Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Series Editors’ Introduction Preface 1.The hero’s prize: The myth of ‘successful’ adolescent girlhood 2. Mythopoeic YA: Bringing new worlds into being to conceive new ways of being 3.Disrupting the myth: Alanna becomes a warrior-maiden 4.Breaking the mirror: Cinder(ella) is a cyborg 5.Engendering a new myth: Daine is ‘of the people’ 6.Being-Hero: Relational, embodied, procreative selfhoo Appendices Notes Bibliography Index

Leah Phillips is Senior Lecturer in English at Plymouth Marjon University, UK. She is the Programme Lead for the BA English and MA Literature for Children and Young Adults and is the President and Founder of the YA Studies Association (YASA).

Reviews for Female Heroes in Young Adult Fantasy Fiction: Reframing Myths of Adolescent Girlhood

A valuable re-visioning of the hero myth through the figure of the female hero, this study also offers a new perspective on fantasy worlds created by women over the last forty years. -- Alison Waller, University of Roehampton, UK Female Heroes in Young Adult Fantasy Fiction offers readers compelling ways to reframe conventional understandings of the hero figure, YA fantasy literature, and constructions of adolescent womanhood more generally. -- Sara K. Day, Truman State University, USA I will recommend this book to students who are interested in gender in literature to encourage a reframing that allows new voices to enter the picture. Perhaps even more importantly, Phillips’ book feels like an invaluable resource for thinking about how to choose, promote, and celebrate texts in a classroom setting. I’m convinced that Phillips’ ideas will be helpful for literature teachers and Children’s Literature scholars examining how meaning is created in the stories we study. * British Journal of Educational Studies *