Hooey Higgins and the storm
- Submitting institution
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Bath Spa University
- Unit of assessment
- 27 - English Language and Literature
- Output identifier
- 1324
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
-
-
- Publisher
- Walker Books
- ISBN
- 9781406343311
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- March
- Year of publication
- 2014
- URL
-
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- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This illustrated novel for 7-9 years olds, featuring the irrepressibly optimistic and active Hooey and his older brother Will, an ad-hoc inventor, was the outcome of a narratological experiment that explored the creative tension between storytelling and the tropes of a particular kind of physical comedy. Slapstick is traditionally seen as a form of ‘low’ comedy. In the west, it has classical origins but is particularly associated with the commedia dell'arte of the medieval and early modern period; in this form, it is often light on plot, relying instead on caricatured ‘larger than life’ characters and exaggerated action. Comprising pratfalls and mishaps, its humour is primarily derived from a carefully choreographed tension between control and its subsequent loss, and its success on stage or in film depends almost entirely on the skill of the performer. On the page, however, effective slapstick needs to be carefully plotted. In writing the previous novels in the Hooey Higgins series, I had added slapstick elements only once the narrative had been fully defined. Observing on school visits how engaged and entertained young readers were by these episodes, I decided instead to explore the process and effect of deliberately building a narrative around an extensively researched list of established tropes of physical comedy. The result pits these two well-established characters (as this was the seventh novel in the series) against a storm in a way that encapsulates slapstick’s core motif of resistance and inevitable surrender: a random and violent external force becoming the perfect — and farcical — foil against Hooey and Will’s unshakeable belief that they are always just an original thought or an invention away from solving any given problem or situation.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
