Sedlmayr G (2017)
Publication Language: English
Publication Type: Book chapter / Article in edited volumes
Publication year: 2017
Publisher: De Gruyter
Edited Volumes: Handbook of the English Novel of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
Series: Handbooks of English and American Studies
City/Town: Berlin
Book Volume: 5
Pages Range: 461-480
ISBN: 9783110369489
Revolving around the issue of growing up, Pullman’s fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials offers a complex discussion of crucial questions pertaining to the conditio humana (life/death, free will/destiny, truth, friendship, love, responsibility etc.). As the essay points out, the young protagonist Lyra, fighting against religiously motivated authorities fixated on the sinfulness of sexuality, becomes representative of a liberating Blakean dialectics of innocence and experience. The topic of maturation is complemented and complicated by the novels’ many-worlds setting, including Pullman’s references to and narrative use of quantum theory, which, on the metaliterary level, relates to the opening up of new ‘worlds’ and perspectives by way of the trilogy’s manifold intertextual allusions. Foregrounding the nature of storytelling, Pullman’s narrative insists on the irreducibility of the sensual and performative qualities of literature, as well as the crucial position of the reader.
APA:
Sedlmayr, G. (2017). Philip Pullman "His Dark Materials" (1995-2000). In Christoph Reinfandt (Eds.), Handbook of the English Novel of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. (pp. 461-480). Berlin: De Gruyter.
MLA:
Sedlmayr, Gerold. "Philip Pullman "His Dark Materials" (1995-2000)." Handbook of the English Novel of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. Ed. Christoph Reinfandt, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017. 461-480.
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