Negotiating Boyhood and Victimisation in the Adolescent Male Rape Novel
type: CreativeWork
description: This dissertation provides a critical content analysis of contemporary, realist adolescent novels depicting boys experiencing particularly rape taken from a corpus of 64 fictional, Anglophone adolescent narratives depicting the sexual abuse (including attempted abuse and rape) of boys published between 1984 and 2022. It is situated at the intersection of masculinity studies and the literary as well as socio-political discourse on sexual violence, thereby following a cultural studies model to investigate how the novels respond to the cultural narrative of male (child) rape as well as male rape myths and rites of passage within a patriarchal society that aligns femininity with victimisation and masculinity with perpetration. Across four chapters I outline how the fictional boys negotiate their various experiences of victimisation (intragenerational and intergenerational, homosexual and heterosexual, intrafamilial and extrafamilial) with the heteronormative masculinity they have been socialised to perform. While the adolescent novel is generally a suitable medium to deconstruct such myths and social roles, I argue that in the adolescent male rape novels under investigation, heteronormative ideas of gender identity and sexual orientation, and thereby victimisation and perpetration, are often not (completely) deconstructed but rather reinforced. Thus, if read uncritically, the novels could easily manifest male rape myths and further stereotypes, thereby not fully succeeding at raising awareness for the sexual abuse of boys. The first two chapters investigate whether scenarios of date rape and statutory rape are depicted as sexual exploitation or sexual education and initiation, drawing upon notions of sexual desire, agency, and consent, and mapping the preliminal rite of discovering sexuality, the liminal rite of experiencing sexuality, and the postliminal rite of enjoying sexuality onto the narratives. In Chapter 1, considering Mary Koss’ (1985) concept of the ‘unacknow…
abstract: This dissertation provides a critical content analysis of contemporary, realist adolescent novels depicting boys experiencing particularly rape taken from a corpus of 64 fictional, Anglophone adolescent narratives depicting the sexual abuse (including attempted abuse and rape) of boys published between 1984 and 2022. It is situated at the intersection of masculinity studies and the literary as well as socio-political discourse on sexual violence, thereby following a cultural studies model to investigate how the novels respond to the cultural narrative of male (child) rape as well as male rape myths and rites of passage within a patriarchal society that aligns femininity with victimisation and masculinity with perpetration. Across four chapters I outline how the fictional boys negotiate their various experiences of victimisation (intragenerational and intergenerational, homosexual and heterosexual, intrafamilial and extrafamilial) with the heteronormative masculinity they have been socialised to perform. While the adolescent novel is generally a suitable medium to deconstruct such myths and social roles, I argue that in the adolescent male rape novels under investigation, heteronormative ideas of gender identity and sexual orientation, and thereby victimisation and perpetration, are often not (completely) deconstructed but rather reinforced. Thus, if read uncritically, the novels could easily manifest male rape myths and further stereotypes, thereby not fully succeeding at raising awareness for the sexual abuse of boys. The first two chapters investigate whether scenarios of date rape and statutory rape are depicted as sexual exploitation or sexual education and initiation, drawing upon notions of sexual desire, agency, and consent, and mapping the preliminal rite of discovering sexuality, the liminal rite of experiencing sexuality, and the postliminal rite of enjoying sexuality onto the narratives. In Chapter 1, considering Mary Koss’ (1985) concept of the ‘unacknow…
author: Plieth, Carla
language: eng
keywords: adolescence, boyhood, child sexual abuse, children's literature, identity, masculinity, rape, rape myths, rite of passage, sexual exploitation, sexual violence, sexuality, young adult literature
license: https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/761f67bd-feef-4eb8-ba97-3ccae28ecc28/download
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
date published: 2023-08-01
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:18Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.104719