Affective Stylistics and Children’s Literature: Spirituality and Transcendence in Robert Munsch’s <em>Love You Forever</em>

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is an excerpt from this article: Using affective stylistics, a method of literary criticism developed by Stanley Fish, I describe my experience of reading Robert Munsch’s Love You Forever, paying particular attention to textual devices related to spirituality and to transcendence. I begin with a definition of the transcendent spiritual, followed by a brief description of affective stylistics before turning directly to a consideration of some of the themes and techniques used to produce the spiritual effects of Love You Forever. Particular attention will be paid to the role the senses play as a means of entry into a spiritual world, to the ways in which spirituality and transcendence are symbolized, to the effects produced by the use of repetition in the text, to the use of nocturnal and diurnal symbolism, to the juxtaposition of the themes of constancy and change, to the links between the predictable rhythms of the storyline and certain needs arising from human development, and, finally, to the play between fantasy and realism in the narrative world.