Art and Literature
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Year 2020, Volume: 6 Issue: 1, 74 - 89, 25.06.2020

Abstract

References

  • Abrams, M. H. & Harpham, G. G. (2012). A Glossary of literary terms. (10th ed.) Cengage learning.
  • Diamond, F. (2011). Beauty and the beautiful beast: Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga and the quest for a transgressive female desire. Australian Feminist Studies, 26(67), 41-55.
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  • Meyer, S. (2008). Breaking dawn. Atom Books.
  • Rosemary, J. (2009). Fantasy: The literature of subversion. Routledge.
  • Rabkin, E. S. (1979). Fantastic worlds: Myths, tales, and stories. Oxford University Press.
  • Ramsdell K. (2012). Romance fiction: A guide to the genre. (2nd ed.). Libraries Unlimited.
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  • Todorov, T. (1973). The fantastic: A structural approach to a literary genre. Press of Case Western Reserve University.
  • Ursula, L. G. (2004). From Elfland to Poughkeepsi. In D. Sandner (Ed.). Fantastic literature: A critical reader. (pp. 144-156). Praeger.
  • Wolfe, G. K. (2002). Evaporating genre: Strategies of dissolution in the postmodern fantastic. In V. Hollinger & J. Gordon (Eds.). Edging into the future. Science fiction and contemporary cultural transformation. (pp. 11-29). University of Pennsylvania Press.

Colonizing the fantastic: Reading Stephenie Meyer’s Breaking Dawn as all-in-one text

Year 2020, Volume: 6 Issue: 1, 74 - 89, 25.06.2020

Abstract


As the life on the planet gets more and more complicated due to the rapid changes in the socio-cultural paradigms, the task of boundary drawing, categorization or classification appears as a hazardous task. Likewise, while Stephenie Meyer’s The Twilight series is generally classified as fantasy, all four novels in the series resist such a simplified classification when tested with the key ideas of Todorov’s insistence on hesitation, Rosemary Jackson’s perception of the fantastic as a deconstructive mode or Rabkin’s idea of fantastic effect. The article will argue that the last novel of the series, Breaking Dawn, exploits various genres while trying to remain in the realm of fantasy. These genres may be listed as romance, erotic romance, uncanny (or the fantastic), epic and, finally, the fairy tale. The novel surpasses the drawn boundaries of different genres without committing itself to any of them and, therefore, the text becomes what might be called an ‘all-in-one text’. It is not just a singular fantastic text but a pluralistic all-in-one text enabling the reader to experience different reading pleasures in one text, which might provide valuable ideas to better understand the general spirit of the postmodern age and the consumerist habits of postmodern readers.

References

  • Abrams, M. H. & Harpham, G. G. (2012). A Glossary of literary terms. (10th ed.) Cengage learning.
  • Diamond, F. (2011). Beauty and the beautiful beast: Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga and the quest for a transgressive female desire. Australian Feminist Studies, 26(67), 41-55.
  • Hutcheon, L. (1995). A Poetics of postmodernism. Routledge.
  • Eddo-Lodge R. (2013). The Anti-Feminist character of Bella Swan, or why the Twilight Saga is regressive. Kritikos, 10. Available at: https://intertheory.org/eddo-lodge.htm
  • Featherstone, M. (2005). Consumer culture and postmodernism. (2nd ed.). Sage Pub.
  • Goc, M. (2018). The King is pregnant: The left hand of darkness and gender as a power Issue. Çeşm-i Cihan, 5(2), 48-60.
  • Jameson, F. (2014). Postmodernism and consumer society. In P. Brooker (Ed.) Modernism/Postmodernism. (pp. 163-180). Routledge.
  • Jarvis, C. (2014). The Twilight of feminism?: Stephenie Meyer's Saga and the contradictions of contemporary girlhood. Children’s Literature in Education, 45(2), 101-115.
  • Lyotard, J. (1984). Answering the question: What is postmodernism?. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Manchester University Press.
  • Meyer, S. (2008). Breaking dawn. Atom Books.
  • Rosemary, J. (2009). Fantasy: The literature of subversion. Routledge.
  • Rabkin, E. S. (1979). Fantastic worlds: Myths, tales, and stories. Oxford University Press.
  • Ramsdell K. (2012). Romance fiction: A guide to the genre. (2nd ed.). Libraries Unlimited.
  • Sandner, D. (2004). Fantastic literature: A critical reader. Praeger.
  • Spieler S. (2012). Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Series and the ‘post(-)ing’ of feminism. Aspeers, 5, 119-144.
  • Todorov, T. (1973). The fantastic: A structural approach to a literary genre. Press of Case Western Reserve University.
  • Ursula, L. G. (2004). From Elfland to Poughkeepsi. In D. Sandner (Ed.). Fantastic literature: A critical reader. (pp. 144-156). Praeger.
  • Wolfe, G. K. (2002). Evaporating genre: Strategies of dissolution in the postmodern fantastic. In V. Hollinger & J. Gordon (Eds.). Edging into the future. Science fiction and contemporary cultural transformation. (pp. 11-29). University of Pennsylvania Press.
There are 18 citations in total.

Details

Primary Language English
Journal Section Literary articles & essays
Authors

Baysar Tanıyan 0000-0002-2843-8835

Publication Date June 25, 2020
Submission Date October 27, 2019
Published in Issue Year 2020 Volume: 6 Issue: 1

Cite

APA Tanıyan, B. (2020). Colonizing the fantastic: Reading Stephenie Meyer’s Breaking Dawn as all-in-one text. The Literacy Trek, 6(1), 74-89.

Creative Commons License The content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Copyright rests with the author; The Literacy Trek must be referred properly.