Synopses & Reviews
THIS groundbreaking study introduces and explores Lacan's complex theories of subjectivity and desire through close readings of canonical children's books such as "Charlotte's Web, Stellaluna, Holes, Tangerine, and "The Chocolate War. Looking Glasses and "Neverlands thus provides an introduction to an increasingly influential body of difficult work while making the claim that children's textual encounters are as significant as their existential ones in constituting their subjectivities and giving shape to their desires. The texts render lucid Lacan's theory, and the theory helps explain why the texts remain so profoundly influential in constructing a child's sense of self. Coats shows how our literate culture has come to define and cope with the inevitable losses and separations of childhood, and how discourses of race, gender, and desire get written on our bodies, transforming us into the subjects we are. The book offers a comprehensive introduction to Lacan's theories of subjectivity, gender, and ethics and also extends those theories into discussions of race and the distinctions between modernist and postmodernist subjectivity. Coats explains Lacanian concepts such as the registers of the real, the imaginary, and the symbolic, alienation and separation, and the nature of desire, the "objet a, and "jouissance; she also takes up Lacan's concept of logical rather than chronological time, showing how picture books facilitate the child's emerging sense of boundaries and otherness and help her establish the imaginary ideals that will foster her growth. Finally, Coats looks at how children's books help a child situate himself with respect to language in the symbolic order, acquire apreferred psychic structure, adopt a gendered public identity, and develop a sense of ethics that may or may not respect the space between the self and other. "Looking Glasses and Neverlands will be of great interest to students an
Synopsis
A “Choice” Outstanding Academic Title
This groundbreaking study introduces and explores Lacan’s complex theories of subjectivity and desire through close readings of canonical children’s books such as Charlotte’s Web, Stellaluna, Holes, Tangerine, and The Chocolate War, providing an introduction to an increasingly influential body of difficult work while making the claim that children’s textual encounters are as significant as their existential ones in constituting their subjectivities and giving shape to their desires.
About the Author
Karen Coats is an associate professor of English at Illinois State University.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Subject of Children's Literature
1. How to Save Your Life: Lessons from a Runt Pig
2. A Time to Mourn: The Loss of the Mother
3. Mourning into Dancing: Recuperating the Loss of the Mother
4. Looking Glasses and Neverlands: Beyond the Symbolic
5. "I Never Explain Anything": Children's Literature and Sexuation
6. Blinded by the White: The Repsonsibilities of Race
7. Abjection and Adolescent Fiction: Ways Out
Conclusion: Postmoderns at the Gates of Dawn
Notes
Bibliography
Index