Latest Module Specifications
Current Academic Year 2025 - 2026
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Description | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Learning Outcomes 1. Contextualize readings of young adult literature in light of a broad theoretical and critical frameworks 2. Distinguish between the metonymic discourse mode of realism and the metaphoric discourse mode of fantasy 3. Elucidate how young adult realist fiction portrays maturation (the movement from innocence to experience, childhood to adulthood) in light of familial and societal belonging and/or estrangement, gender, artistic self-expression, 4. Present the argument that young adult fantasy has the potential to be one of the most ideological and political of genres of writing 5. Communicate viewpoints effectively, through oral and written language, but especially in light of established linguistic, literary, scholarly and/or cultural conventions | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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All module information is indicative and subject to change. For further information,students are advised to refer to the University's Marks and Standards and Programme Specific Regulations at: http://www.dcu.ie/registry/examinations/index.shtml |
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Indicative Content and Learning Activities
Overview This module examines the single most important generic distinction in young adult (and children’s) fiction: that between realism and fantasy or, more particularly, the metonymic discourse mode of realism and the metaphoric discourse mode of fantasy. The module presents scholarship that elucidates the metonymic discourse mode of young adult realist fiction and its concerns with conditions of childhood and adolescence, social limitations imposed by the self and society, and power dynamics in relationships between adolescents and adults. It also introduces students to literary works that support the contention that young adult fantasy has the potential to be one of the most ideological and political of genres of writing. Because the metaphoric discourse mode of fantasy is allegorical, it is a genre that exists in a symbiotic relationship – commenting upon it, criticizing it and illuminating it. Authors covered may include Philip Pullman, J R R Tolkien, Suzanne Collins, Patrick Ness, Richard Adams, Siobhan Down, Nick McDonell, Leanne O'Sullivan Contextual Reading Falconer, Rachel. The Crossover Novel: Contemporary Children’s Fiction and Its Adult Readership. New York and London: Routledge, 2009. Hill, Crag, ed. The Critical Merits of Young Adult Literture: Coming of Age. New York: Routledge, 2014. McCallum, Robyn. Ideologies of Identity in Adolescent Fiction: The Dialogic Construction of Subjectivity. New York: Garland, 1999. Mallan, Kerry and Pearce, Sharyn, eds. Youth Cultures: Texts, Images and Identities. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003. Mendesohn, Farah. Rhetorics of Fantasy. Fishers, IN: Wesleyan, 2008, pp. xiii–xxv. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Indicative Reading List Books: None Articles: None | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Other Resources None | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||