Fictions of Adolescent Carnality

Sexy sinners and delinquent deviants

Author

Lydia Kokkola | Luleå University of Technology

Hardbound – Available

ISBN 9789027201553 | EUR 95.00 | USD 143.00

e-Book –

ISBN 9789027272041 | EUR 95.00 | USD 143.00

Fictions of Adolescent Carnality considers one of the most controversial topics related to adolescents: their experience of desire. In fiction for adolescents, carnal desire is variously presented as a source of angst, an overwhelming experience over which one has no control, bestial, disgusting and, just occasionally, a source of pleasure. The on-set of desire, within the Anglophone tradition, has been closely associated with the loss of innocence and the end of childhood. Drawing on a corpus of 200 narratives of adolescent desire, Kokkola examines the connections between sociological accounts of teenagers’ sexual behaviour, adult fears for and about their off-spring and fictional representations of adolescents exploring their sexuality. Taking up topics such as adolescent pregnancy and parenthood, queer sexualities, animal-human connections and sexual abuse, Kokkola provides wide-ranging insights into how Anglophone literature responds to adolescents’ carnal desires, and contributes to on-going debates on the construction of adolescence and the ideology of innocence.

[Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition, 1] 2013. x, 236 pp.

Publishing status: Available

https://doi.org/10.1075/clcc.1

Table of Contents

Introduction | pp. 1–20

Adolescence, innocence and power: Sexuality as power | pp. 21–50

The calamitous consequences of carnality: Loss and loneliness, pregnancy and parenthood, disease and death | pp. 51–94

Queer carnalities: Adolescent sexuality as queer sexuality | pp. 95–136

The beastly bestiality of adolescent desire | pp. 137–170

The abjection of abused adolescents | pp. 171–206

The end of innocence and the on-set  of knowledge? | pp. 207–214

Corpus of novels and short stories  for teenagers | pp. 215–220

Other works of fiction | pp. 221–222

Secondary sources | pp. 223–232

Index | pp. 233–236

“Congratulations to Lydia Kokkola on this interesting book, which provides thoughtful and important analyses and is written in a lively, engaging style. Each chapter is valuable in its own right, and combines aptly chosen theory with equally well selected examples. Most importantly, it provides a framework and gives food for thought for analysing other works from literature and other media.”

Vanessa Joosen, University of Antwerp

“This volume is a major contribution to the field of children’s literature. No critic has so thoroughly and intelligently analyzed the ideological pressures on the concept of innocence as it has influenced the depiction of sexuality in adolescent literature. The author persuasively deconstructs Anglophone notions of innocence to demonstrate how authors writing for teenagers imbue the genre with depictions of sexuality that undermine and diminish the legitimacy of carnal desire. This volume is a unique and rigorous contribution to an under-studied issue in adolescent literature.”

Roberta Trites, Illinois State University

“ Fictions of Adolescent Carnality should be commended as an excellent and probing study into Western cultural constructions of adolescence.”

Victoria Flanagan, Macquarie University, on the website of the International Research Society for Children's Literature, 2013

Cited by

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2023. Directions of Desire: Reading the Adolescent Body. International Research in Children's Literature 16:1 ► pp. 16 ff.

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[no author supplied]

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This list is based on CrossRef data as of 16 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

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