Delinquent Palaces: Adolescent Museum Visitation in Literature

This thesis explores the ways in which museums are visited by desiring adolescent subjects in literature. Arising from a process of anthologising museum visitation narratives, this study identifies that their protagonists are often adolescents in crisis. Adolescence is developed in the analysis as being not necessarily a category of age, rather a state of being an open structure that seeks ways and means to reorganise subjectively. It is a positive exploration of the non-work of the delinquent in annexed or repurposed transitional public space of a mnemo-mythological order.