Title: Susan Cooper's heightened reality : how narrative style, metaphor, symbol and myth facilitate the imaginative exploration of moral and ethical issues
Abstract: Susan Cooper's fantasy series The Dark is Rising Sequence has attracted a great deal of critical acclaim. As each of the five novels were published they received literary awards for excellence. In 1965 Over Sea Under Stone was named on the Horn Book Honour List. In 1973 the second book of the sequence. The Dark is Rising was published and named the ALA Notable Book and the Newbury Honour Book. It was the runner-up for that year's Carnegie Medal and won the Boston Globe-Honour Book Awards. The Greenwitch, in 1974, was named the ALA Notable Book of the year. The fourth book of the quintet, The Grey King, won the Newbury Medal, and the Tir na N'Og Award; was named on the Horn Book Honour List and the ALA Notable Book citations. It also received a commendation for the Carnegie Medal. The fifth and final book of the series, Silver on the Tree was published in 1977 and won the Tir na N'Og Award. Despite this literary success, however, there is very little secondary critical material devoted to Cooper's work. In recent years there has been some important analysis of Susan Cooper's writing and The Dark is Rising Sequence in particular, but there has been a remarkable lack of academic interest in these award-winning novels. This study attempts to fill the void currently existing in Cooper scholarship but the primary purpose for examining this series of books is that they provide an opportunity to investigate the techniques authors use to depict their moral world-view. A critical appraisal of Cooper's use of narrative style, fictional genres and literary tropes reveals how she presents moral and ethical issues imaginatively and persuasively. Susan Cooper is seen as a children's writer and is published on the children's lists accordingly. There are many aspects of her work that appeal to a younger audience, but older readers also find her stories satisfying. Critics who have analysed The Dark is Rising Sequence either locate the stories within children's literature without investigating why they believe the books are suitable for children and young adults; or they try to justify why the novels belong instead to adult literature. This thesis investigates critical criteria for children's literature and the difficulties encountered when establishing such a definition. It analyses how the narrative techniques employed in Cooper's work define the five book series given its popularity among both young and older audiences; and it assesses how these techniques allow her to depict moral and ethical issues in a manner that makes them available to readers of all ages. The Dark is Rising Sequence is also often located within the genre of fantasy due to the many generic elements identifiable throughout the series. Cooper successfully follows the traditional quest patterns of fantasy, in a place where dialectically opposed impulses of human nature can battle, with her heroes embarking upon the conventional path to self-discovery and maturity. This thesis therefore examines the generic elements of fantasy and how they provide authors the opportunity to explore issues of and evil, and analyses Cooper's fictional world in this context, and it consequently scrutinises the journey of Cooper's heroes, evaluates their generic development as they become aware of the real values in life (Svensen 59) and discusses the inconsistencies that become apparent in their makeup and ultimate fate. Cooper's use of metaphor, symbol and myth allows her to challenge her readers through her heroes, informing them about the nature of and evil and persuading them to believe, as she does, in the ascendancy of Universal good This thesis examines how Cooper uses literary techniques and myth to achieve her polemic. This thesis concludes by showing that Cooper, exploiting the genre of fantasy, the particular and vaguely defined rubric of children's literature and myth, metaphor and symbol, presents in her novels a polemic imagery, intended to influence the beliefs, attitudes and actions of her readers.
Publication Year: 2002
Publication Date: 2002-01-01
Language: en
Type: dissertation
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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