Kurzfassung

Since Orwell’s totalitarian dystopia 1984 (1949), a myriad of dystopian novels have been published. Here, Lowry’s The Giver (1993) deserves special mentioning as it paved the way for dystopian fiction in young adult literature written from an adolescent and teenager perspective. Having languished in the background for almost 20 years, young adult dystopian novels and their film adaptations have been rising in popularity since Suzanne Collins’ dystopian trilogy The Hunger Games (2008-2010)....Since Orwell’s totalitarian dystopia 1984 (1949), a myriad of dystopian novels have been published. Here, Lowry’s The Giver (1993) deserves special mentioning as it paved the way for dystopian fiction in young adult literature written from an adolescent and teenager perspective. Having languished in the background for almost 20 years, young adult dystopian novels and their film adaptations have been rising in popularity since Suzanne Collins’ dystopian trilogy The Hunger Games (2008-2010). This development is particularly astonishing as it has been argued that, as Lowry put it, dystopian fiction is passé and “that dystopias are no longer written these days” (Baumann, 2005) since “the post-Fordist, ‘fluid modern’ world of freely choosing individuals does not worry about the sinister Big Brother who would punish those who stepped out of line” (ibid.). This call for contributions proposes a different view point and takes Baumann’s criticism as a point of departure. The increasing number of young adult dystopian novels and film adaptations display a variety of themes and motifs also to be found in ‘classic’ dystopian novels such as Huxley’s Brave New World (1931), Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953), or Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985). At the same time, contemporary dystopian fiction, e.g. Roth’s Divergent (2011-2013), Dashner’s Maze Runner (2009-2011) or Rossi’s Under the Never Sky (2012-2014), continuously grows as a genre by pushing genre conventions and tackling controversial and contemporary issues.
The aim of this symposium is to study this ‘newest wave’ of contemporary dystopian fiction from a literary, cultural and didactic perspective. By going beyond the prima facie predominant motif of a downtrodden society, we intend to explore what else constitutes young adult dystopian fiction. What are new patterns and innovations introduced by these novels? Which social and political issues do these narratives tackle? What (if anything) does the ‘teenage perspective’ add to this? Furthermore, we are interested in why teens have such an interest in dystopian novels and how dystopian fiction extends the young adult literature genre. From a didactic perspective, as Reeve puts it, the “troubled or disfigured society” (2011: 35) of contemporary dystopian fiction holds the potential to approach and critically question current social as well as political affairs combined with teenage issues such as growing up, finding oneself and one’s place in society, friendship, love, and modern heroism. » weiterlesen» einklappen