Ellen Handler Spitz, honors college professor of visual arts, discussed the young adult novel Jepp, Who Defied the Stars, byKatherine Marsh, in her latest column in the New Republic.
The historical novel follows the story of Jepp, a court dwarf in the Spanish-ruled Netherlands of the late sixteenth century. Spitz compares Jepp’s story – in whichhis destiny is defined by his body and dictated by the whims of others – to the plight of the story’s adolescent readers.
“Adolescents are newly encased—like Jepp—in bodies that seem too small (or too large) but never a match for what is inside them, which nobody else can see…. despite the plethora of insignificant choices accorded them, young people’s lives are not in their hands, and they often feel cooped up in prisons not of their making,” she writes.
“As one reads Jepp, Who Defied the Stars, present and past entangle just as childhood and adulthood spar.”
The column, “The Age of Adolescence,” appeared online on November 7.
Tags: CAHSS, HonorsCollege
