Fictions of Adolescent Carnality

Fictions of Adolescent Carnality considers one of the most controversial topics related to adolescents: their experience of desire. In fiction for adolescents, carnal desire is variously presented as a source of angst, an overwhelming experience over which one has no control, bestial, disgusting and, just occasionally, a source of pleasure. The on-set of desire, within the Anglophone tradition, has been closely associated with the loss of innocence and the end of childhood. Drawing on a corpus of 200 narratives of adolescent desire, Kokkola examines the connections between sociological accounts of teenagers’ sexual behaviour, adult fears for and about their off-spring and fictional representations of adolescents exploring their sexuality. Taking up topics such as adolescent pregnancy and parenthood, queer sexualities, animal-human connections and sexual abuse, Kokkola provides wide-ranging insights into how Anglophone literature responds to adolescents’ carnal desires, and contributes to on-going debates on the construction of adolescence and the ideology of innocence.