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Epic Stories: Sequence Fiction, Young Readers, And The Aesthetics Of World Building, Jordana Estelle Hall
Epic Stories: Sequence Fiction, Young Readers, And The Aesthetics Of World Building, Jordana Estelle Hall
Theses and Dissertations
This study theorizes the world building processes that sequence fiction engages within a framework of intratextual structuralism and cognitive aesthetic stage theory. The study begins with an interdisciplinary overview of fictional and possible worlds theory before proposing a structural adaptation of this lens that explains the developmental, aesthetic benefits of the genre for young readers. Chapter II is an application of the adapted lens to a canonical epic, the His Dark Materials sequence by Philip Pullman. I interpret the intentional structure of the story world across novels to discuss how these engage readers at different aesthetic milestones and encourage a …