Childhood and Sacrifice in the Contemporary Maori Novel

Résumé 0

Childhood and Sacrifice in the Contemporary Maori NovelSeveral of the most well-known novels by Maori authors of the past decades feature a very special child that stands at the centre of the story as the saviour of its people, such as Simon in The Bone People, Toko in Potiki, Grace in Once Were Warriors, and Kahu in The Whale Rider. Representing Nature, Magic, and Origin, this child appears to be of Romantic descent, and just as during Romanticism it is used for the political purpose of criticizing the project of Modernity and its focus upon progress, materialism, and rationality.The symbolic importance of these children is emphasized in the novels through their dramatic deaths, or near-deaths, which are sacrificial in that they are the direct cause of their communities to change towards a more traditional way of life.The recent development of the discipline of Childhood Studies allows us to look at the Child as socially constructed in the same way as Woman or the Native, as a set of ideas that control the way that children are perceived and described in different discourses. Looking at these novels from the perspective of Childhood Studies I wish to discuss the reasons why the child of Romanticism has become such an important, though eminently sacrificeable, character of the postcolonial New Zealand novel