Theories and Possibilities of Adolescent Literature

Abstract

Theories and Possibilities of Adolescent Literature Roberta Seelinger Trites (bio) At the 1995 Children's Literature Association conference, Lisa Rowe Fraustino noted the paucity of theoretically oriented literary criticism analyzing adolescent literature. She was particularly struck by how few published articles employ poststructural methodologies to interrogate the critical issues of the genre. This special issue of the Quarterly arose as a response to critics who share Fraustino's concerns. Children's-literature studies include major works grounded in feminism, semiotics, Marxism, narrative theory, reader-response theory, deconstruction, and even hybrids that utilize more than one of these approaches, but relatively few critics have employed these theories to investigate adolescent texts. On at least one subject informing the genre, however, several recent critics have made efforts to be theoretical, for many people are engaged in the debate about what defines adolescent and young adult literature. I myself tend to view the YA novel, a book marketed for teenagers, as a subset of adolescent literature, which is a larger category that includes novels that consider adolescents or adolescence, as Little Women and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn do. But in his attempt to define YA literature, Robert C. Small considers the YA novel to be the larger designation. Marilynn Olson notes the difference between many coming-of-age novels and those that fit Small's definition when she points out that although Annie John is not, strictly speaking, a YA novel, studying it may help us come to a better understanding of adolescence (2). Caroline Hunt outlines some of the history of the terms "adolescent literature" and "young adult novel" in her introductory article in this issue. But I think that the major concern is this: by whatever name we call them, novels about adolescents exist in continuous tension with novels for children and adults. Aidan Chambers considers adolescence in literature "an image for, a metaphor of, the whole of life" (194). Michael Steig points out the fluidity of such classifications as children's, adolescent, and adult literature, and he cautions us: "If we do not keep in mind just how arbitrary, how conventional, and to some extent how market-driven [the terms] are, we risk reifying and isolating those categories" (39). Such self-reflexive questioning about how institutional definitions are constructed lies at the heart of much poststructural theory. In her lead article, "Young Adult Literature Evades the Theorists," Hunt identifies some of the poststructural theorists who have analyzed texts written for young adults, and she offers an important overview of the major issues and publications that inform the study of adolescent literature. In examining the critical publications on adolescent literature in the last few decades, Hunt's article serves as a much-needed interdisciplinary review of the pertinent scholarly literature, exploring the reasons that adolescent literature has largely escaped the scrutiny of poststructural theorists. The explanations Hunt offers range from the pragmatic to those that are themselves more theoretical, but her conclusions leave us with some unsettling concerns about whether YA literature will ever be widely theoretical. She does suggest that none of us can do solid theoretical work until we have a broad familiarity with the myriad titles in the field, both books published in the U.S. and those published internationally. She also notes the interesting possibilities that the Internet provides us as scholars: through online discussion groups, we can gain access to new titles and new ideas that are bound to help those of us who hope to theorize about the field. To some degree, the other articles in this special issue exist in some tension with Hunt's analysis, for all of them employ poststructural strategies in ways that probe the frontiers of the study of adolescent literature. Virginia Schaefer Carroll explores the possibility of feminist revision in her article "ReReading the Romance of Seventeenth Summer." Carroll's theoretical methodologies have important implications for the study of YA literature in general. For example, when have we as scholars overlooked characters who are exercising their voices and agency because they do not match our preconceived notion of what strength and independence should look like? What are the ways available for characters in older novels to enact their power...