Books by Maria Nikolajeva

Offering a wide range of critical perspectives, this volume explores the moral, ideological and literary landscapes in fiction and other cultural productions aimed at young adults. Topics examined are adolescence and the natural world, nationhood and identity, the mapping of sexual awakening onto postcolonial awareness, hybridity and trans-racial romance, transgressive sexuality, the sexually abused adolescent body, music as a code for identity formation, representations of adolescent emotion, and what neuroscience research tells us about young adult readers, writers, and young artists. Throughout, the volume explores the ways writers configure their adolescent protagonists as awkward, alienated, rebellious and unhappy, so that the figure of the young adult becomes a symbol of wider political and societal concerns. Examining in depth significant contemporary novels, including those by Julia Alvarez, Stephenie Meyer, Tamora Pierce, Malorie Blackman and Meg Rosoff, among others, Contemporary Adolescent Literature and Culture illuminates the ways in which the cultural constructions ''adolescent'' and ''young adult fiction'' share some of society''s most painful anxieties and contradictions.

Now available in paperback! In this radically new approach to text typology, Maria Nikolajeva examines the depiction of time in literature for children. Nikolajeva identifies a continuum of texts ranging from those that depict non-linear time, typical of archaic, or mythical, thought, to those that express linearity, typical of contemporary mainstream literature. The author argues that literature is a deconstruction, a displacement, of myth, and that it depicts a symbolic coming-of-age process rather than a strictly representational reflection of a concrete "e;reality."e; The texts are categorized by the degree to which the coming-of-age process is accomplished; the movement is from an initial condition of primary harmony (Arcadia, Paradise, Utopia) through different stages toward either a successful or a failed passage. From Mythic to Linear is a broad study, encompassing a number of children's novels from different epochs and countries: Scandinavian, British, American, Canadian, Australian, South African, and East European. The international character contributes a better knowledge of children's literature from different parts of the world-widening the horizons of children's literature research too often confined to one particular country. Nikolajeva's unique approach allows her to disregard the traditional, and some would argue obsolete, division of children's novels into realism and fantasy. With its unique approach and broad international scope, From Mythic to Linear will be of interest to all those interested in children's literature and in comparative literature in general. Includes bibliography and footnotes.

Now available in paperback! Until now, there was no theoretical research of character in children's fiction and very few comprehensive theoretical studies of literary characters in general. In her latest intellectual foray, the author of From Mythic to Linear ponders the art of characterization. Through a variety of critical perspectives, she uncovers the essential differences between story ('what we are told') and discourse ('how we are told'), and carefully distinguishes between how these are employed in children's fiction and in general fiction. Yet another masterful work by a leading figure in contemporary criticism.