Off-campus UNL users: To download campus access dissertations, please use the following link to log into our proxy server with your NU ID and password. When you are done browsing please remember to return to this page and log out.
Non-UNL users: Please talk to your librarian about requesting this dissertation through interlibrary loan.
Children's journey stories as an epic subgenre
Abstract
Recent genre criticism provides the basis for exploration of the relationship among six fantasies published for children, The Faerie Queene and The Pilgrim's Progress. The adult works and the children's works share epic characteristics in their plots, themes, characters, concern for language and purpose. While these characteristics are formulaic in criticism they exist in variation in actual works. Similarities between particular elements which comprise those characteristics have been largely unrecognized in criticism. This study begins an examination of these less obvious similarities. It is evident that each plot involves a journey. However, the patterns of movement, of testing and resting, repetition of events, and movement in circles and cycles, for example, are also similar. Several of the works share similarities in their religious themes, but all of the works also share non-religious themes, according to psychological, political and intellectual ideals. The characters in these works are influenced in expected ways by destiny. However, variations among similar agents of change are also important. Emphasis on overcoming or transcending oneself is another general characteristic. Still more specifically, the protagonists are successful in their journeys and are heroes only by virtue of their radical change and growth. The works are also about language as names and words have special power and the importance and misuses of language are illustrated. Finally, all of the works have a common purpose: they are designed to teach. The epic tradition of didacticism in the works of centuries ago is brought gracefully into contemporary fiction.
Subject Area
British and Irish literature|American literature|Comparative literature
Recommended Citation
Stokes, Kathy Jo, "Children's journey stories as an epic subgenre" (1988). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI8907539.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI8907539