Date of Award
2006
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts in English Composition
Department
English
First Advisor
Henry, Holly
Second Advisor
Halko, Gabrielle
Third Advisor
Chen, Rong
Abstract
Drawing especially on Donna Haraway's notion of the cyborg, this thesis argues that Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl novels, through their depiction of the cyborg and their use of metafiction, intertextuality, and irony, subvert binaries and hierarchies that cause social injustice. Chapter one argues that Colfer's characters disrupt the oppressive binary opposition between innocence and experience that characterizes children's literature. Chapter two argues that Colfer's fairy hierarchy satirizes the human hierarchy. Chapter three argues that Colfer's cyborg, by disrupting the boundary between machine and organism, breaches the wall around the pervasive garden hierarchy of childhood innocence. Chapter four argues against the traditional textual hierarchies which classify children's literature as inferior, and which give adult writers power over child readers.
Recommended Citation
Clark, Amy Ruth Wilson, "Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl novels: Contemporary subversive tales" (2006). Theses Digitization Project. 2986.
https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/2986
