Dead Funny? The Ideological Use of Humour and Comedy in Saci Lloyd’s The Carbon Diaries 2015 and 2017

Authors

  • Alyson Miller Deakin University, Australia
  • Rebecca Hutton Deakin University, Australia
  • Elizabeth Braithwaite Deakin University, Australia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21153/pecl2017vol25no1art1096

Keywords:

environment, irony, Saci Lloyd, Carbon Diaries, young adult fiction, humour

Abstract

The threat of environmental devastation, and the speed with which humanity is damaging the planet, are widely viewed as serious concerns in the twenty-first century. Yet the gravity which accompanies interpretations of such issues can also serve as ‘a fruitful starting point for humor’ born of ‘incongruence[s] between the serious and the non-serious’ (Lyyktimäki 2015, p. 178). In Saci Lloyd’s young adult novels The Carbon Diaries 2015 and The Carbon Diaries 2017, humour and comedy contribute to each text’s attempts to encourage implied young adult readers to engage critically with the threat of ecological devastation, even though the questions of how to reduce the likelihood of ecological disaster most effectively on a broad scale, and how best to bring about responsible use of the environment, are problems which are still a long way from being answered

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Author Biographies

  • Alyson Miller, Deakin University, Australia

    Dr. Alyson Miller is an award-winning writer, critic and scholar, with expertise in scandalous literature, and the representation of freaks in literary and popular texts. She currently teaches literary studies and professional and creative writing at Deakin University, Australia. A 2015-17 Victorian Arts Council grant is funding her most current project, a graphic novel/prose poem collection examining a post-atomic Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (with Cassandra Atherton and artist Phil Day).

  • Rebecca Hutton, Deakin University, Australia

    Dr. Rebecca Hutton teaches children’s and young adult literature at Deakin University, Australia. In addition to previously published papers on YA dystopian texts (with co-authors Elizabeth Braithwaite and Alyson Miller), her recent publications also include co-authored chapters in Routledge Companion to Fairy-Tale Cultures and Media (2017, with Emma Whatman), The Middle Ages in Popular Culture: Medievalism, Genre and Identity (2015, with Clare Bradford), and an article published in Papers on music in young adult LGBTQ fiction.

  • Elizabeth Braithwaite, Deakin University, Australia

    Dr. Elizabeth Braithwaite has long had research interests in fiction for young adults which focuses on global disaster. She has had a number of publications in Papers: Explorations into Children’s Literature, and has also had research published in Barnboken – Journal of Children's Literature Research, Bookbird: A Journal of International Children's Literature, and interjuli. She is an administrative officer in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Deakin University, Australia, and is also a keen amateur musician and composer.

References

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Published

2017-01-01

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Articles

How to Cite

“Dead Funny? The Ideological Use of Humour and Comedy in Saci Lloyd’s The Carbon Diaries 2015 and 2017” (2017) Papers: Explorations into Children’s Literature, 25(1), pp. 51–72. doi:10.21153/pecl2017vol25no1art1096.

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