Opening The Box of Delights

Abstract

Both the device and the book called The Box of Delights construct a vision of childly imagination by playing with genre and through the use of myth and magic. Crime and adventure genres are subverted by Kay Harker's, and thereby the reader's, self-consciousness, and by privileging the fantastic; myth is presented as reality at its most intense, vivid, and sublime, apprehended with a child's sense of awe. Good magic is social, old, and childly; evil magic is selfish and new. Magic is a plot manoeuvre, but is more profoundly a metaphor for the child making sense of the world.