Innocence, Heterosexuality, and the Queerness of Children's
Literature examines distinguished classics of children's literature
both old and new?including L. Frank Baum's Oz books, Laura Ingalls
Wilder's Little House series, J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels,
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, and Stephenie
Meyer's Twilight series?to explore the queer tensions between
innocence and heterosexuality within their pages. Pugh argues that
children cannot retain their innocence of sexuality while learning
about normative heterosexuality, yet this inherent paradox runs
throughout many classic narratives of literature for young readers.
Children's literature typically endorses heterosexuality through
its invisible presence as the de facto sexual identity of countless
protagonists and their families, yet heterosexuality's ubiquity is
counterbalanced by its occlusion when authors shield their readers
from forthright considerations of one of humanity's most basic and
primal instincts.
The book demonstrates that tensions between innocence and
sexuality render much of children's literature queer, especially
when these texts disavow sexuality through celebrations of
innocence. In this original study, Pugh develops interpretations of
sexuality that few critics have yet ventured, paving the way for
future scholarly engagement with larger questions about the
ideological role of children's literature and representations of
children's sexuality.
Tison Pugh is Associate Professor in the Department of English
at the University of Central Florida. He is the author of Queering
Medieval Genres and Sexuality and Its Queer Discontents in Middle
English Literature and has published on children's literature in
such journals as Children's Literature, The Lion and the Unicorn,
and Marvels and Tales.
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