Infantile informers : the child narrator as mitigator of sentiment in sentimental political fiction : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English at Massey University, Distance, New Zealand
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Date
2019
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Massey University
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Abstract
From Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tim’s Cabin to Charles Dickens’ Hard
Times, the genre of sentimental political fiction—fiction that tugs on our
heartstrings for socio-political end—is often circumscribed to the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. This thesis, however, traces the extension of this tradition,
widely condemned for its manipulative, moralistic and mawkish character, into
contemporary literary culture. Through close analysis of a series of politically-
charged twentieth- and twenty-first century literary novels that feature a child
narrator—Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite
Runner, Lloyd Jones’ Mr Pip, and NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New
Names—the thesis argues that the device of the child narrator has helped
these novels evade the accusations of “mawkish sentimentality” that tarnished
their nineteenth-century kin. As it will show, our western understanding of
childhood as naïve and unschooled enables the child narrator to disguise
sensationalism, subjectivism and didacticism, ensuring that, unlike their
historical counterparts, these novels tug on our heartstrings in the pursuit of a
socio-political agenda without foregoing critical acclaim.
Method: Other than close reading, the primary method employed to
substantiate this claim is reader response theory. Thus, reviews of the novels,
both reader and scholarly, feature strongly as evidence that these novels
escape aspersions of sentimentality.
Methodology: Though there are no studies directly addressing the work of
the child narrator in fiction, the two main bodies of work in which this thesis
intervenes are the literature on sentimental political fiction and the literature on
the depiction of children in fiction. In addition, this thesis draws on two areas of
study that inform the research. The first is the field of childhood studies,
focussing specifically on the child narrator, rather than just the child. This field
provided the framework for interpretation of the various models of childhood
which inform the way that each novel constructs their child narrator. The
second is affect theory, which helped ground speculations about the way tonal
nuances in both the primary and secondary texts can affect our response to the
message these texts impart.
This thesis, then, not only fills a critical gap, but also suggests that the
very fact that critics have ignored the device testifies to its efficient subterfuge
and, in this sense as the child narrator has the capacity to foment genuine
social awareness, they should no longer be overlooked.
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Keywords
Sentimentalism in literature, Children in literature, Political fiction, History and criticism