Abstract
This paper sees Neil Gaiman’s Coraline as following a darker tradition in children’s literature, most commonly found in the fairy tale. It explores some of the existential issues that concern us all: to do with identity, sex, death, ontology, evil, desire and violence. The article takes a largely psychoanalytical approach, showing how Freud’s concept of the Uncanny is particularly helpful in explaining both the text’s appeal, and its creepy uneasiness. Namely, our fears about existence and identity as separate beings: our worry that we will either not be noticed (being invisible and isolated), or we will be completely consumed by the attention of another. Lacan’s concepts of the Symbolic and the Real provide the theoretical underpinning for this reading, together with Kristeva’s notion of the abject.
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Notes
Information from the Harper Teen page http://www.harperteen.com/global_scripts/product_catalog/book_xml.asp?isbn=0060528850&tc=ae. The awards are too numerous to mention but, among others, the Hugo and Nebula for Best Novella, the School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly and Children’s Magazine Best Book awards, and the IRA/CBC Children’s Choice Winner.
In the American edition, the layout is different, with the letter ‘I’ more caught up in a swirl of the other letters, to capture the look of a mist. While this doesn’t seem to change the basic point about a loss of individuality, the English edition seems to make the point more emphatically.
References
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Dr. David Rudd is Professor of Children’s Literature at the University of Bolton, UK. He has published about 100 articles in this and related areas and is currently working on the Routledge Companion to Children’s Literature. He is Co-editor (UK) of Children’s Literature in Education.