Stephen King’s It and Literary Representations of the Child

Castellaneta, Mariolina

Item

Stephen King’s It and Literary Representations of the Child

Castellaneta, Mariolina

Abstract

In my dissertation, I analyze how Stephen King constructs the image of the child in his novel, It. More specifically, I examine his construction in terms of the history of literary representations of children, using examples from the narratives of William Blake, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain. In the first chapter, I focus on the importance that Blake and King give to imagination in children and the city as a negative force that corrupts innocence. In the second chapter, I examine how domestic abuse conditions the child’s behavior and his or her narrative trajectory. I also look at the constructions of gender in relation to the concept of child abuse through an analysis of the characters of Nancy in Dickens’s Oliver Twist and Beverly in King’s novel. Lastly, in the third chapter of my thesis, I explore the relationship between the concept of otherness and the definition of Americanness in It and in Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.