Gabrielle Kristjanson
University of Melbourne, School of Culture and Communication, Graduate Student
- Adult Fiction, Children's Literature, Monsters and Monster Theory, Literature and Trauma, Hauntology, Masculinities, and 18 moreFantasy Literature, Spectulative Fiction, Horror Literature, Language and Power, Space and Place, Pedagogy, Comparative Literature, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Criminal Monsters, Monster Theory, Serial killers, Child Predators, Monstrosity, Children's and Young Adult Literature, Law and Literature, Editing of Journals, and Haunting and Spectralityedit
- I am currently a PhD Candidate at the University of Melbourne in Australia. I am a Canadian citizen and Australian pe... moreI am currently a PhD Candidate at the University of Melbourne in Australia. I am a Canadian citizen and Australian permanent resident. My full name is Gabrielle Freedom Steele Kristjanson.edit
This article considers the relationship between the text and accompanying illustrations in Clive Barker’s children’s novel The Thief of Always: A Fable. This tale of abduction was published in the social background of fear around the... more
This article considers the relationship between the text and accompanying illustrations in Clive Barker’s children’s novel The Thief of Always: A Fable. This tale of abduction was published in the social background of fear around the child predator of the early 1990s and incorporates ideas of monstrous villainy, loss of childhood innocence, and insatiable desires. As a fable, Thief is a cautionary tale that not only teaches that childhood years are precious and are not to be wished away or squandered in idle leisure, but also of the dangers that some adults pose to children. Problematically, an honest and frank discussion of adult sexual desires toward children would despoil the very innocence that is trying to be protected; thus, a lesson such as this must be sublimated within the story. Yet, it is the illustrations, and more specifically the way in which the illustrations corroborate and contradict the plot of this story that reveals an underlying ambivalence toward the figure of the child and an echoing duality present in both the child and the child predator.
Research Interests:
This article explores the spacial realm of the child predator in the children’s novel, The Thief of Always (1992). Informed by social discourse, the environment of the predator reveals not only the arrested psyche of the predator, but... more
This article explores the spacial realm of the child predator in the children’s novel, The Thief of Always (1992). Informed by social discourse, the environment of the predator reveals not only the arrested psyche of the predator, but also the popular understanding of the techniques used to manipulate and retain children in his realm. Thief is a portal-quest fantasy, and the portal into the fantasy realm of the predator reveals much in terms of the type of child desired by the predator and the agency of the child. Via the entrance, the child gains privileged access to the realm of the predator, wherein a reversal of power allows for the child to experience a false autonomy and have his every desire fulfilled. Boredom and childhood innocence play a key role in the victimization of the child, while social discourses about the child and the child predator inform both representations in this narrative. The exclusion of the predator’s realm from the rest of narrative reality is significant in that it creates a distinction between the predator and normative society, allowing for his exclusion while also facilitating his abduction and retention of children.
Research Interests:
This article investigates the literary trope of disgust used in Clive Barker’s most obvious representation of the child predator as depicted in his first horror novel The Damnation Game. Damnation presents the predator as a fantastic... more
This article investigates the literary trope of disgust used in Clive Barker’s most obvious representation of the child predator as depicted in his first horror novel The Damnation Game.
Damnation presents the predator as a fantastic intrusion into the realm of reality, a walking dead figure whose bodily contaminants seep into the moral realm. In this form, the fantastic spills into literary reality, juxtaposing and conflating the two world views. The predator plays a subtle but significant role in this narrative. Unbeknownst to himself, Anthony Breer is a reanimated corpse, a monsterisation that inscribes moral and physical decay onto the body.
Embedded within this representation are suppositions about the motivating factors that drive his literal appetite for schoolgirls, whom he abducts, murders, and displays in monstrously domestic scenes as part of his private and cannibalistic ritual. Breer creates a vacant child of the dead, which allows for the projection of his desires for acceptance and assimilation into normative society. Filth serves as a limiting factor, reducing both the identity of the child and the child predator and creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of their relation. Yet, it is the emergence of the child's subjectivity, an acknowledgement of complexity and uniqueness, that frees the child and the child predator.
Damnation presents the predator as a fantastic intrusion into the realm of reality, a walking dead figure whose bodily contaminants seep into the moral realm. In this form, the fantastic spills into literary reality, juxtaposing and conflating the two world views. The predator plays a subtle but significant role in this narrative. Unbeknownst to himself, Anthony Breer is a reanimated corpse, a monsterisation that inscribes moral and physical decay onto the body.
Embedded within this representation are suppositions about the motivating factors that drive his literal appetite for schoolgirls, whom he abducts, murders, and displays in monstrously domestic scenes as part of his private and cannibalistic ritual. Breer creates a vacant child of the dead, which allows for the projection of his desires for acceptance and assimilation into normative society. Filth serves as a limiting factor, reducing both the identity of the child and the child predator and creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of their relation. Yet, it is the emergence of the child's subjectivity, an acknowledgement of complexity and uniqueness, that frees the child and the child predator.
Research Interests:
Most translation theorists agree that source text fidelity results in a translation that aptly transmits the foreign cultural values and meaning embedded within the source language to a target culture. While the preservation of... more
Most translation theorists agree that source text fidelity results in a translation that aptly transmits the foreign cultural values and meaning embedded within the source language to a target culture. While the preservation of foreignness might be beneficial for the propagation of international artistic diversity, when translating works of popular fiction, domestication is key to a novel’s successful incorporation into the target literary system. In popular fiction translation, the goal is accessibility rather than artistic influence or cultural exchange, yet the necessary domestication can be problematic. This article examines the reception of the English-to-French translation of an epic fantasy novel by Clive Barker. Online reviews written by the French-speaking readership describe the translated text as aberrant of Barker’s oeuvre and incomprehensible. While it may be easy to dismiss this translation as yet another example of poor translation practices, knowing that the translator, Jean-Daniel Brèque, is an award-winning translator and that he has translated many works by other popular artists such as Stephen King and Dan Simmons points the blame elsewhere. An analysis of Jean-Daniel Brèque’s translation of Weaveworld reveals the detrimental effect that strict adherence to the source text can have on the reception of popular literature in translation and affirms that domestication is necessary to transform the source text into a version digestible and understandable by the target audience.