Deconstructing the Hero: Literary Theory and Children's Literature

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Product Description

This book sets out to explore the structure and meanings within the most popular of all literary genres - the adventure story. Deconstructing the Hero offers analytical readings of some of the most widely read adventure stories such as Treasure Island , the James Bond stories and Star Wars. The book describes how adventure stories are influential in shaping children's perception and establishing values.
When many of these stories define non-white, non-European people as inferior, and women as marginal or incapable, we should be worried about what they are teaching our children to think. Margery Hourihan shows how teaching children to read books critically can help to prevent the establishment of negative attitudes, discourage aggression and promote values of emotion and creativity.

Deconstructing the Hero: Literary Theory and Children's Literature Review

The title of this book would lead any buyer to believe that it offers fresh insight into a mainstay of literature - the hero - an insight that promises a dissection of those myths, fantasies, epics and legends with which all readers are, to diferent extents, familiar. Be it as academic, teacher, reader or film watcher, cartoon and comic book afficionado, or role-player (the list is huge), the works open to deconstruction are expansive and the opportuntities this book offered limitless. Instead we get a hodge-podge of destruction, not deconstruction, as Hourihan veers wildly from genre to genre and across expanses of time without any acknowledgement of their significance. Throughout this book the reader will find superficial and unsubstantiated assertions which the writer fails to adequately explore and which are often undercut by misunderstandings and shallow interpretations of themes, errors of plot analysis, descriptive mistakes when outlining events and inadequately researched analysis of textual allusions. Finally the condescension that Hourihan seems to hold for those readers who do not share her view, that these narratives are white male supremacy in action, that according to her, 'cling' to tales that are 'vivid, enjoyable, easily understood, memorable and compelling' sets the tone of the entire book but says much more about her than about the works supposedly under analysis. The one redeeming feature is her description of the theories supposedly underlying her book - the author's failure to make adequate use of them in her analysis is one of its many failings.

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