Bullies, the Bullied and Bullying Narratives in Contemporary Fiction

Abstract

Studies of bullying have proliferated across disciplinary fields over the last decade, including psychology, education studies, sociology, health studies , criminology and gender studies. At the same time, media reports have increasingly focused on incidents of bullying and their effects on children, particularly in relation to cyber-bullying and children's use of social media. It is scarcely surprising, then, that narratives involving bullying feature prominently in recent fiction for children and young adults (YA), in which bullies frequently function as narrative devices. They are commonly portrayed as types of the cruel child or adolescent, locked in binarized opposition to bullied protagonists. Examples of bully tropes abound: the physically dominating but dim-witted thug epitomized by Biff in Back to the Future (1985); the crazed maniac who goes one © The Author(s) 2018 M. Flegel and C. Parkes (eds.), Cruel Children in Popular Texts and Cultures, Critical Approaches to Children's Literature, https://doi.