Geschichten, die unter die Haut gehen. Narrationsindizierende Tattoos in Alice Broadways Ink-Trilogie

In order to establish a link between tattoo and literature studies, this paper examines the specific literary potential of tattoos in young adult literature, using Alice Broadway’s Ink trilogy (2017–2019) as an example. It briefly discusses the historical process of devaluating tattoos in European societies, which went hand in hand with the devaluation of certain groups of people. After that, it elaborates some assumptions of tattoo studies and examines them in the context of Werner Wolf’s (2002) intermedial narrative theory. The third part shows how Alice Broadway’s Ink series productively takes up insights of tattoo studies, since tattoos here form the basis of a fantastic culture and also have a story-telling effect. The novels demonstrate inclusion and exclusion processes that run along the borders of un/tattooed skin. Thereby, the trilogy reverses common attributions of European societies of intact and tattooed skin, and demonstrates how both tattoo studies and fictional literature put bodies and books synonymously.