“Xanadu Hidden in the Heart of Bootle”: Place and Foreignness in The Unforgotten Coat

Screech, Ben ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8644-9607 (2024) “Xanadu Hidden in the Heart of Bootle”: Place and Foreignness in The Unforgotten Coat. In: Children’s Literature in Place. Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, New York, pp. 13-20. ISBN 9781003355502

Text 14088 Screech (2024) Xanadu Hidde in the Heart of Bootle.pdf - Accepted Version Restricted to Repository staff only until 28 August 2025. (Publisher Embargo). Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives 4.0. Download (191kB)

Abstract

This chapter considers the relevance of notions of foreignness to our comprehension of place and identity in a case study text aimed at a middle-grade audience, Frank Cottrell Boyce’s The Unforgotten Coat (20112). The analysis will consider how this primary text problematizes various Anglocentric narratives and cultural paradigms and, in so doing, aligns with pertinent aspects of Postcolonial theory, engaging, for example, with Edward Said’s writings in Orientalism (1978), which traces the emergence of the figure of the “foreign Other” to Western attitudes to the “exotic” Orient. This chapter posits that the foreign “Other” in fiction for young people exists as a character trope invoked by authors to provide a commentary on, and critique of the “local” social order, in this case Britain in the opening years of the twenty-first century. Out of this chapter’s discussions of foreignness inevitably arise considerations of place and its relationship to national identity, assimilation and belonging.

Item Type:	Book Section
Subjects:	L Education > L Education (General) P Language and Literature > PR English literature P Language and Literature > PZ Childrens literature Z Bibliography. Library Science. Information Resources > Z004 Books. Writing. Paleography
Divisions:	Schools and Research Institutes > School of Education and Science
Research Priority Areas:	Society and Learning
Depositing User:	Charlotte Crutchlow
Date Deposited:	20 May 2024 09:32
Last Modified:	17 Mar 2025 12:45
URI:	https://eprints.glos.ac.uk/id/eprint/14088

University Staff: Request a correction | Repository Editors: Update this record