Recognition Plots and Intercultural Encounters in Aidan Chambers’ Dance on My Grave (1982)

Abstract

This article offers a new interpretation of Aidan Chambers’ novel Dance on My Grave (1982) by pointing to the interconnection between representations of cultural others in fiction and the recognition plotlines that are so important to YA storytelling. It also proposes the relevance of the method of literary genetics to YA studies, and vice versa. Literary genetic analysis in this article shows how Chambers developed Dance on My Grave’s adolescent characters Hal and Barry, flagging key decisions that the author made to create a dynamic of otherness between them. Archival material from Seven Stories, the British National Centre for Children’s Books, can be used to reconstruct Chambers’ decision to differentiate Barry from Hal by religious tradition. Investigating his engagement with Judaism during Dance on My Grave’s genesis leads to this article’s discussion of authorial positionality, intention, and the interrelation between intercultural encounters and otherness and plot development in the novel. Dance on My Grave’s reliance on tropes of anagnorisis, which Chambers calls “recognition” (The Age Between 91), constructs Hal’s encounter with Barry’s Judaism as a cultural learning experience that enables both Hal’s growing-up process and Chambers’ writing process. This is problematic because this intercultural encounter happens at Barry’s expense: he dies; Hal dances on his grave. Judaism emerges during Dance on My Grave’s genesis to deepen Hal’s understanding of death, life, love, and himself. A means, not an end, cultural learning contributes to a recognition plotline that enables spiritual enlightenment in Chambers’ construction of adolescence.

Keywords

• intercultural encounter
• literary genetic analysis
• recognition plotlines
• otherness
• aidan chambers
• judaism