![](https://image.librarything.com/pics/fugue21/magnifier-left.png)
![](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/P/1409436616.01._SX180_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg)
Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... Genre, Reception, and Adaptation in the Twilight Seriesby Anne Morey
None No current Talk conversations about this book. no reviews | add a review
Much of the criticism on Stephenie Meyer's immensely popular 'Twilight' novels has underrated or even disparaged the books while belittling the questionable taste of an audience that many believe is being inculcated with anti-feminist values. Avoiding a repetition of such reductive critiques of the series's purported shortcomings with respect to literary merit and political correctness, this volume adopts a cultural studies framework to explore the range of scholarly concerns awakened by the 'Twilight novels and their filmic adaptations. Contributors examine 'Twilight's debts to its predecessors in young adult, vampire, and romance literature; the problems of cinematic adaptation; issues in fan and critical reception in the United States and Korea; and the relationship between the series and contemporary conceptualizations of feminism, particularly girl culture. Placing the series within a broad tradition of literary history, reception studies, and filmic adaptation, the collection offers scholars the opportunity to engage with the books' importance for studies of popular culture, gender, and young adult literature. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNone
![]() GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:![]()
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
[b]ecause we know, for instance, that Meyer believes Bella constitutes a slate blank enough for readers to ‘easily step into her shoes,’ Meyer’s priileged classes instantly become visible by showing us what she thinks of as invisible. Unsurprisingly, they are traits about herself that we can assume she takes for granted: white, female, middle-class, heterosexual, America, Judeo-Christian, etc…. The fan, then, is the intended reader who either does not know or does not care what ideologies construct her, while the anti-fan is the intended reader who does know, and resists, but, because she will never be able to throw off completely that which constructs her, remains vulnerable to manipulation of the powerful triggers of those ideologies.
I was particularly intrigued by her argument that Bella and Edward were so effective because Meyer split Mary Sue in two, “funnel[ing] each of Mary Sue’s two primary objectives—author insertion and wish-fulfillment—individually into Bella and Edward, respectively.” This makes Twilight the story of two sides of a single being “meeting and attempting to reunite into the whole character they were meant to be,” tapping into primal yearning for integration in readers as well. (