The Evantropian Project: Revitalising Critical Approaches to Young Adult Literature
Bugajska, A. (2019). Engineering youth: The evantropian project in young adult dystopias. Ignatianum University Press.
Abstract
Anna Bugajska’s recent book Engineering Youth: The Evantropian Project in Young Adult Dystopias (2019) is an important and thought-provoking inquiry into the field of young adult literary criticism. While for the average reader, young adult narratives may be associated with juvenile tales created with an intent to provide escapist entertainment, a true connoisseur of youth literature is well aware of an immense didactic potential of this genre. Bugajska certainly belongs to the latter category as she diligently engages with young adult dystopias to highlight the immense critical power of these texts. In the following review article, the author of the paper is going to offer a brief commentary on the critical perspective that Bugajska employs to explore the notion of evantropia. The first section of this review discusses Bugajska’s volume as a part of utopian intellectual tradition, the second section postulates that ideas presented in Engineering Youth enrich literary criticism in the field of speculative fiction and children’s and young adult literature, the third section briefly discusses the layout of the volume and the content of each chapter, the fourth section presents an overview of selected core ideas that Bugajska presents in her work and in the last section the author of the paper offers his final thoughts on Engineering Youth.
Keywords
Anna Bugajska; young adult literature; dystopia; evantropia; science fiction; transhumanism
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University of Wrocław, WSB University in Wrocław Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7109-3641
Robert Gadowski – MA, prepares his doctoral dissertation at the Faculty of Letters at the University of Wrocław (Poland). In his doctoral thesis, he explores the notion of liberal democratic freedom in contemporary young adult dystopian literature. Currently Robert Gadowski works at the WSB University in Wrocław. Contact: robert.gadowski@gmail.com.
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