This paper is an attempt to combine my love of
reading with my interest in education. My exploration of
romance literature and its popular appeal is based on a
developmental "bibliotherapy" approach to reading. Focusing
on the adolescent girl in her identity crisis, I examine
potential benefits and pitfalls that romance reading
might hold for her as she grows toward an independent
maturity and becomes involved in intimate relationships.
Although it includes classroom observations, my
project is not a data-based survey of adolescent girls and
their reading habits; rather, it is a theoretical
exploration of moral and pedagogical concerns which I have
encountered through my experiences with teaching and
reading. As such, it deals with issues of gender and genre
and the role of the educator in the promotion of relevant
texts during the transition years of adolescence. I rely
on several eighteenth-century works--Radcliffe's popular
gothic romance and Austen's satire of that genre (though
Austen's novel, too, contains a moving romance); on
Rousseau's Emile and Gilligan's feminist theories--to
develop my thesis that romance reading can provide a
landscape for sublimation and delay of early sexual
experience; and that it is the educator's role to guide
young girls in their reading to recognize the dangers of
reification and to lead them toward a stronger sense of
self. / Thesis / Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/16249 |
| Date | 09 1900 |
| Creators | Veldhuis, Roelie |
| Contributors | Ferns, John, Ajzenstat, Janet, English |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
Page generated in 0.0025 seconds