Academic literature on the topic 'Child abuse, fiction'

Child abuse began to emerge as a central topic depicted in Western children’s and teenage realist fiction from around the 1990s, peaking in prevalence around the turn of the century and into the early years of the twenty-first century. In this thesis I explore the formal expression of abuse and trauma in a corpus of twenty French texts published between 1992 and 2008 for young-adolescent readers aged between 10 and 16 years. The project begins with a Propp-inspired structural model of child-abuse plot features and characters, which identifies a set cast of protagonists across the corpus which serve a specific functional role in the narrative. I then focus on the three main narratological categories of voice, mood and time, using Genette’s Discours du récit as a framework for a close reading of the abuse texts, whilst also drawing upon various trauma theorists, to explore how choice of narrator, focalizing character and temporal perspectives are manipulated to express different aspects of and perspectives on abuse and the psychological impact of abuse in particular. The final chapter is an analysis of the means used by both protagonists within the texts, and the authors of the texts, to communicate and express abuse and trauma on a personal level, to other characters, and to readers. By drawing upon structural and narratological studies as well as trauma theory in my analysis, I show that form and content are inextricably linked across the corpus. Indeed, the protagonists’ traumatic memories and painful experiences are expressed both on a diegetic level via the characters, and also reflected in the formal and structural features of the texts.

Master of Arts<br>Department of Communications Studies<br>Sarah E. Riforgiate<br>At 47 years old, Lori is a high-functioning businesswoman, matriarch, and contributing member of society. Lori is also diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). From age 3, Lori was violently raped and assaulted by several perpetrators, yet views her multiple personalities as strength, as survival mechanisms, and wants to share her story to help prevent child sexual abuse. Utilizing methods drawn from communication studies, ethnodrama, and autoethnography, this study aims to tell a person’s story in her own words and in a format that can easily be shared with both academic and non-academic audiences. Lori’s story is woven together as an ethnodramatic play that includes original interview transcripts along with an autoethnographic monologue describing the experience of writing someone’s truth when it challenges the hegemonic views of society, and instead embraces the feminist ideals of equality and deconstruction of power. Academic research needs to reach further than academic journals to make a true impact. Through the non-conventional venues of autoethnography and ethnodrama, we can breathe life into our research and provide accessibility to innovative information for those who may need it most.

Written within an existentialist mode, Nakamura Fuminori’s early fictional works lend themselves to be read as therapeutic technologies reaching out to Japanese youth whose lives are marked by anxiety, isolation, and precariousness. Because English-language scholarship on Nakamura is lacking, this thesis analyzes two of his novels – Child of Dirt and Evil and the Mask – in order to introduce how Nakamura understands the human, how his texts function formally as therapeutic technologies, and how, in the final analysis, they exhibit a nascent sexism that borders on misogyny.

Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2013.<br>ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The study explores representations of troubled childhoods in post-1990 African narratives. Defining troubled childhoods as the experiences of children exposed to different forms of violations including physical, psychological, sexual and emotional abuse, the study reflects on depictions of such experiences in a selection of contemporary African fictional texts in English. The study‘s central thesis is that, while particular authors‘ deployment of affective writing techniques offers implicit analysis of troubled childhoods, the knowledge about this reality that such literary texts produce and place in the public sphere resonates with readers because of the narrative textures that both make knowledge concerning such childhoods accessible and create a sense of the urgent plight of such children. They render troubled childhoods grieveable. The study delineates three attributes of the selected texts that explain why such fictions can be considered significant from both social and aesthetic perspectives: namely, their foregrounding of intertwined vectors of violation and/or vulnerability; their skilful use of multi-layered narrative voices and their creation of specific posttraumatic damage and survival tropes. The four main thesis chapters are organised thematically rather than conceptually or theoretically, because representations of troubled childhoods are contextually and experientially entangled. Using Maria Pia Lara‘s notion of ―illocutionary force‖ and specific aspects of trauma and affect theory, the study focuses centrally on how the units of narration construct persuasive and convincing depictions of troubled childhoods while using fiction to convene platforms for reflection on the phenomena of child victims of war violence, abusive parenting, sexual predation and sexual violation.<br>AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die studie ondersoek voorstellings van gekwelde kinder-ervaringswêrelde in post-1990 narratiewe deur skrywers van Afrika. Gekwelde kinder-ervaringswêrelde word gedefinieer as die ondervindinge van kinders wat blootgestel is aan verskillende vorms van skending, insluitend fisiese, psigologiese, seksuele en emosionele skending. Met hierdie definisie in gedagte reflekteer die studie op gelselekteerde uitbeeldings van sulke ervarings in hedendaagse Afrika-fiksie in Engels. Die studie se sentrale tesis is dat, terwyl sekere outeurs se ontplooiïng van affektiewe skryftegnieke implisiete analise van gekwelde kinder-ervaringswêrelde bied, resoneer die kennis oor hierdie realiteit wat sulke literêre tekste oplewer en in die publieke sfeer plaas met die leespubliek omdat die struktuur van die narratiewe die verskynsel van kwellende kinder-ervarings onthul en bewustheid van die dringende aard van die verskynsel bemoontlik. Sulke kinderlewens word op hierdie manier treurbaar [grievable] gemaak. Die studie delinieer drie eienskappe van die gekose tekste wat verduidelik waarom hierdie tekste vanuit beide sosiale en estetiese perspektiewe as beduidend beskou kan word, naamlik die verstrengelde vektors van verkragting en kwesbaarheid wat hulle op die voorgrond bring, hul bekwame gebruik van veellagige narratiewe stemme en hul skepping van spesifieke posttraumatiese skade- en oorlewingstrope. Die vier middelste tesis-hoofstukke is tematies in plaas van konsepsueel of teoreties georganiseer, omdat voorstellings van gekwelde kinder-ervaringswêrelde kontekstueel- en ervaringsverstrik is. Met die gebruik van Maria Pia Lara se begrip van illocutionary force en spesifieke aspekte van trauma- en inwerkingsteorie fokus die studie hoofsaaklik op hoe die narratiewe eenhede oorhalende en oortuigende afbeeldings van gekwelde kinder-ervaringswêrelde konstrueer terwyl hulle fiksie gebruik om platforms vir refleksie op die fenomeen van kinderslagoffers van oorlogsgeweld, misbruikende ouerskap en seksuele- predasie en verkragting byeen te bring.

Magister Educationis - MEd<br>An important aspect of my thesis is the discussion of the various narrators in the novel; Vladimir Nabokov, John Ray Jnr. and Humbert Humbert. The novel, or Humbert’s memoirs, is only published after Lolita has died in order to preserve her dignity. John Ray Jnr. is the psychologist who is charged with editing Humbert's memoirs to ensure that no lewd details are published. This brings problems of their own, as we find that John Ray Jnr. has clear moral perceptions of Humbert as a person. This effectively creates a fiction within a fiction, which is already set in the fictitious genre of the novel. Vladimir Nabokov arguably informs the novel with his own ethics and ethos. This interrogates the reliability of the narrators and calls into question the truth-value of fiction and the inappropriateness of the law to ban fiction that discusses taboo issues. The main aim of my thesis is to discredit Humbert as a reliable narrator and character by analysing the taboo issues of paedophilia, incest, rape and murder. This will be done in order to show how Nabokov proposes alternative morals by deconstructing traditional morality using taboo topics in fiction

This research project asserts the primacy of creative practice as a key method of enquiry and explores how fictional stories, re-imagined from historical events of the mid-twentieth century, may provide different ways of viewing a world which was inhabited by once-silenced children, now known as the ‘forgotten Australians’. To this end, the thesis is made up of a creative component in the form of a book-length collection of short fiction that is accompanied by a critical component positioning the thesis contextually, theoretically and methodologically. The research reveals overwhelming evidence of a culture of endemic abuse within Australian child welfare organisations whereby harm was done to children in the context of policies and programmes that were designed to provide care and protection. During this era, ideologies underpinning community beliefs were patriarchal, conservative and insular. It was purported that children were ‘committed’ to imposing, regimentally run institutions ‘for their own good’. The project draws on sources from disciplines including history, psychology and literary studies, as the investigation exposes the blurred boundaries which exist between fiction and nonfiction; personal and social memory; official and unofficial narratives; knowing and not-knowing the past. In doing so, it argues that although there can be no single narrative of history, fictional narratives provide another conduit into stories from the past and have the potential to act as agents for social change.

The novel manuscript Girl in the Shadows tells the story of two teenage girls whose friendship, safety and sanity are pushed to the limits when an unexplained phenomenon invades their lives. Sixteen-year-old Tash has everything a teenage girl could want: good looks, brains and freedom from her busy parents. But when she looks into her mirror, a stranger’s face stares back at her. Her best friend Mal believes it’s an evil spirit and enters the world of the supernatural to find answers. But spell books and ouija boards cannot fix a problem that comes from deep within the soul. It will take a journey to the edge of madness for Tash to face the truth inside her heart and see the evil that lurks in her home. And Mal’s love and courage to pull her back into life. The exegesis examines resilience and coping strategies in adolescence, in particular, the relationship of trauma to brain development in children and teenagers. It draws on recent discoveries in neuroscience and psychology to provide a framework to examine the role of coping strategies in building resilience. Within this broader context, it analyses two works of contemporary young adult fiction, Freaky Green Eyes by Joyce Carol Oates and Sonya Hartnett’s Surrender, their use of the split persona as a coping mechanism within young adult fiction and the potential of young adult literature as a tool to help build resilience in teen readers.

The novel manuscript Girl in the Shadows tells the story of two teenage girls whose friendship, safety and sanity are pushed to the limits when an unexplained phenomenon invades their lives. Sixteen-year-old Tash has everything a teenage girl could want: good looks, brains and freedom from her busy parents. But when she looks into her mirror, a stranger’s face stares back at her. Her best friend Mal believes it’s an evil spirit and enters the world of the supernatural to find answers. But spell books and ouija boards cannot fix a problem that comes from deep within the soul. It will take a journey to the edge of madness for Tash to face the truth inside her heart and see the evil that lurks in her home. And Mal’s love and courage to pull her back into life. The exegesis examines resilience and coping strategies in adolescence, in particular, the relationship of trauma to brain development in children and teenagers. It draws on recent discoveries in neuroscience and psychology to provide a framework to examine the role of coping strategies in building resilience. Within this broader context, it analyses two works of contemporary young adult fiction, Freaky Green Eyes by Joyce Carol Oates and Sonya Hartnett’s Surrender, their use of the split persona as a coping mechanism within young adult fiction and the potential of young adult literature as a tool to help build resilience in teen readers.