Abstract
Today, queer teenagers are still more likely than their peers to develop mental health issues. Recent endeavours to combat those issues have been trying to show them that 'it gets better'. However, it is not only important to see whether queer adolescents can imagine happiness as a possibility in the future, but also how they perceive their own agency over such happiness in the present. This project aims to examine the literary portrayal of happiness in queer YA literature with specific attention to the characters' agency in their pursuit and experience of happiness. Research has shown that novels can empower readers if they can identify with characters that establish agency. In order to examine this potential in literature, this study will use a corpus of influential contemporary queer YA novels and first analyse their portrayal of happiness as a literary emotionality. In the next stage, those portrayals of happiness will be analysed in terms of agency to examine how these stories represent potential for empowerment regarding happiness. A focus on temporality will be a central aspect in both part of the analysis. As a result, this research not only contributes to literary research, but also aims to develop a toolkit for organisations that use literature to empower queer youth.
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