Moral values in Sarah Fielding's novel “The Governess, or the Little Female Academy”

This article deals with the moral values and social issues described in the school story of the famous English writer Sarah Fielding “The Governess, or the Little Female Academy”, which is considered one of notable works written specifically for children in the Age of Enlightenment. The article examines some of the components of the genre “School Story” – the traditional opening and description of the daily routine of an educational institution for girls, plot twists, certain characters, etc. At the same time, following Sarah Fielding’s ideas, the author scrutinises the issue of children's reading and the need to discuss its content with adults. Using the examples of the wards' stories about their life before school, the problem of interpersonal relations of characters is analysed – within a family, with parents, brothers and sisters, other relatives, governesses and servants; whereas outside it, with representatives of various social groups. Much attention is paid to the depiction of behaviour etiquette and constant striving for perfection, as well as control over various emotions. As a result of the study, it is concluded that school stories are useful for young readers due to their topicality and positive general attitude, which allows adolescents to overcome numerous life difficulties during the formation and development of their personalities.

‘Not at all afraid’: Queer Temporality and the School Detective Story

Kate Haffey has recently argued that if queer time can be seen as a turning away from narrative coherence, it suggests new possibilities for considering narrative structures more generally. Combining the narratively rigid structures of the school story and the detective novel, the four novels discussed in this article – Gladys Mitchell’s Laurels are Poison (1942), Josephine Tey’s Miss Pym Disposes (1946), Shirley Jackson’s Hangsaman (1951), and Joan Lindsay’s Picnic at Hanging Rock (1967) – disrupt conventional understandings of linear time. Depicting not only queer, or potentially queer, characters, but a queer phenomenological perspective, they challenge reader expectations with a focus on aporias and gaps, whether in terms of trauma (Jackson), the blurring of fact and fiction (Lindsay), or the prolonged delay of both crime and resolution (Tey). These novels draw attention to the insufficiency of texts to capture experience, and the inadequacy of textual authority. As such, they reveal the extent to which mid-twentieth-century women’s fiction was able to challenge the genres and narrative structures with which it was most closely associated.

Conto Escolar, de M.R. James

Publicado em 1911 em Ghost Stories of an Antiquary Part 2: More Ghost Stories, de M.R. James, o conto A School Story ecoa o fascínio de James por antiguidades em fusão ao que o autor posiciona como sendo a força sobrenatural que age e/ou interfere na vida dos personagens. No conto, um professor de Latim, de nome Sampson, possui uma moeda bizantina pela qual seus alunos tomam interesse. No entanto, ele se preocupa após ler sentenças que os seus alunos dizem não ter escrito. Em seguida, a partir da visita de uma estranha figura, avistada por dois de seus alunos, o professor desaparece misteriosamente, e, cerca de trinta anos mais tarde, sua moeda dourada é encontrada junto a dois corpos num poço entre quatro árvores...

Rewriting the school story through racebending in the Harry Potter and Raven Cycle fandoms

Racebending fan work has the potential to be a productive site of postcolonial critique. In a close analysis of two racebending young adult literature texts—the titular hero of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series (1997–2007) and major character Ronan Lynch from Maggie Stiefvater's Raven Cycle (2012–16)—fans' racebending of the primary characters permits postcolonial revision by challenging the predominantly white worlds they depict as well as recuperating the erasure of diaspora by other fans who insist Britishness and Irishness equate to whiteness. Racebending Harry and Ronan fan works center around queer romances: Harry with school rival Draco Malfoy and Ronan with his in-series boyfriend, Adam Parrish. Racebent Harry fan work, particularly work incorporating a queer romance with Draco, creates a space for fans to imagine alternative possibilities for the series beyond the heteronormative, hegemonic conclusion represented in Rowling's epilogue. Similarly, racebending Ronan offers a depiction of soft black masculinity and loving queer romance that subverts the common association of blackness with anger and aggression. By depicting two characters of color at the center of these queer schoolboy romances, fans disrupt the white homoeroticism and imperialism of the school story genre upon which both series draw.