Haunted Histories: Time-slip Narratives in the Antipodes

Authors

  • Claudia Marquis University of Auckland, New Zealand

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21153/pecl2008vol18no2art1170

Keywords:

time-slip, Antipodean literature, historical fiction

Abstract

In a startling moment in Margaret Mahy’s The Tricksters, Harry draws apart from the rest of her family in her attic bedroom in the family beach house, Carnival’s Hide. She looks into a mirror and sees her image dismantle, allowing a very different, but nevertheless clearly related figure to emerge. This is a typical event in time-slip stories, with their peculiar interest in the problematic construction of subjectivity. In this case the characters who slip between times are a bizarre trio of brothers who erupt into the more or less ordinary family lives of the Hamiltons, disturbing the modern moment with ancient memories, igniting passions, provoking revelations, raising questions about identity, threatening fragmentation, but finally harnessed in the interests of the ongoing narrative in which Harry’s adult life forms.

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Author Biography

  • Claudia Marquis, University of Auckland, New Zealand

    Claudia Marquis teaches Adolescent Fiction, African and Caribbean Literature and Renaissance Literature at the University of Auckland. She has published several articles on Jamaica Kincaid and other West Indian writers, as well as New Zealand children’s fiction. Her current research includes book length studies of Imperial fiction and of Victorian fantasy writing for children.

References

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Published

2008-12-01

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

“Haunted Histories: Time-slip Narratives in the Antipodes” (2008) Papers: Explorations into Children’s Literature, 18(2), pp. 58–64. doi:10.21153/pecl2008vol18no2art1170.

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