Abstract:
This thesis identifies the ‘hidden adult’ as a dominant speaking subject in
children’s fantasy narratives. It argues that the adult’s voice present in the
shadow text constructs in a double layered narrative inconsistent images of
childhood with moralising associations. The narrative duality in children’s
literature in particular causes textual ambivalence that can, however, be
subverted to liberate its language. The remaining surface text voices the child’s
polyphonic self in its I-other dimension to express an inherited cultural memory
of the hidden adult. With its dialogical implications and structural otherness, the
inherited memory can travel in two axes: vertically for a transtextual return to
medievalism and horizontally for a transmedial revision of the hidden adult while
maintaining a textual identity for each narrative version
