Exemplarity and Performance in Literature for Children

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Jefferson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Experimental Psychology ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Popular Press ◽  
The Subject ◽  
And Performance ◽  
At Will

This chapter surveys the children's literature detailing genius-level exemplarity and performance. The association between genius and childhood was already implicit in the image of innate genius in the eighteenth century, gearing it essentially to youth. From the start of the nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, child prodigies and the childhood of genius—though not necessarily the same thing—became the focus of new forms of attention that subjected them to particularly intense scrutiny in three major areas: children's literature, experimental psychology, and, in the middle of the twentieth century, the popular press. The chapter first examines Charles Baudelaire's claim that “genius is simply childhood recovered at will,” before turning to the subject of famous children as well as children's literature.

Historical Fragments’ Mobile Echo

Transfers ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan E. Bell ◽  
Kathy Davis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Ming Dynasty ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
The Third ◽  
Opium War ◽  
The Subject

Translocation – Transformation is an ambitious contribution to the subject of mobility. Materially, it interlinks seemingly disparate objects into a surprisingly unified exhibition on mobile histories and heritages: twelve bronze zodiac heads, silk and bamboo creatures, worn life vests, pressed Pu-erh tea, thousands of broken antique teapot spouts, and an ancestral wooden temple from the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) used by a tea-trading family. Historically and politically, the exhibition engages Chinese stories from the third century BCE, empires in eighteenth-century Austria and China, the Second Opium War in the nineteenth century, the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the mid-twentieth century, and today’s global refugee crisis.

scholarly journals Детское Чтение (1785-1789) и Детския Забавы (1792): Рецепция немецкого протестантизма в детских изданиях XVIII в.

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 18-39
Author(s):  
Виталий Симанков
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Short Story Collection ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Story Collection ◽  
Primary Focus

This article is focused on Protestantism-related ideas encrypted in children’s literature in eighteenth-century Russia. The primary focus of the study is on Detskiia Zabavy (1792), a short-story collection that was thought to be an original Russian book. As this study shows, the book in question is actually a collection of texts translated from German and French. The bulk of the collection deals with the so-called short didactic stories, the ideological roots of which have been overlooked and understudied. The author’s findings help to clarify, among other things, the subject of Pushkin’s parody in his Detskaia Knizhka (1830).

Thomas Spence, Children’s Literature and ‘Learning … Debauched by Ambition’

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Grenby
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Children's Education ◽  
The People ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Utopian Thinking

This chapter examines the synergies between Thomas Spence's work as a radical educationalist and the non-canonical utopian children's literature of John Newbery. One of the most infamous phrases of the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century ‘war of ideas’ came from Edmund Burke, who described the people as a ‘swinish multitude’. This ‘swinish multitude’ barb was used in the context of scholarship and education, something that the chapter argues would appear particularly provocative to Spence. A teacher himself, Spence recognised how important children's education was to social and political renewal. By juxtaposing Newbery's publications and Spence's writings, this chapter highlights the remarkable radicalism of mid-eighteenth-century children's literature and emphasises the importance of education as a strand of Spence's utopian thinking.

Poe and Mesmerism

PMLA ◽  
1947 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 1077-1094
Author(s):  
Sidney E. Lind
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Edgar Allan Poe ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Animal Magnetism ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Psychoanalytic Theories

In three of his stories, “A Tale of the Ragged Mountains,” “Mesmeric Revelation,” and “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” Edgar Allan Poe reflected the interest of his day in what was by all odds the most fascinating of the new “sciences.” Mesmerism, first as a somewhat frightening novelty in the hands of its “discoverer,” Anton Mesmer, during the closing decades of the eighteenth century, and then as the handmaiden of medicine in the first half of the nineteenth century, had achieved enormous popularity throughout Europe and the United States.1 To compare such popularity with the spread of the psychoanalytic theories of Freud, Jung, and Adler in the twentieth century is to make but a feeble analogy, considering the difference in time and the development of science between the two ages. In addition, the interest manifested in mesmerism contained far more sensationalism and mysticism, and therefore had a more direct and widespread appeal. The extent of interest becomes clear when it is realized that in 1815 a commission was appointed in Russia to investigate animal magnetism, with a “magnetical” clinic being subsequently established near Moscow; that by 1817 doctors in Prussia and in Denmark were the only ones authorized to practice mesmerism, and were compelled to submit their findings to royal commissions; and that by 1835 a clinic had been established in Holland, and in Sweden theses on the subject were accepted for the doctorate.2

Blackness, Imperialism, and Nationalism in Dominican Children's Literature

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-61
Author(s):  
Stacy Ann Creech
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Young People ◽  
Educational Reform ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Specific Construction

From pre-Columbian times through to the twentieth century, Dominican children's literature has struggled to define itself due to pressures from outside forces such as imperialism and colonialism. This paper examines the socio-political contexts within Dominican history that determined the kind of literature available to children, which almost exclusively depicted a specific construction of indigeneity, European or Anglo-American characters and settings, in an effort to efface the country's African roots. After the Educational Reform of 1993 was instituted, however, there has been a promising change in the field, as Dominican writers are engaged in producing literature for young people that includes more accurate representations of Blackness and multiculturalism.

The Children’s Novel

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Hunt
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Literary System

This chapter explores the development of the children’s novel throughout the twentieth century. This period represents a change from the protection of childhood to the commodification of childhood, and from essentially gentleman-amateur publishing to highly professional production and marketing. But for all its successes, the idea that the children’s novel is necessary inferior to its adult counterpart dies hard. This is the more illogical because novels for children do not have exact counterparts in the adult literary ‘system’. From an adult point of view, all children’s literature is necessarily ‘popular’ or ‘lowbrow’, or at its ‘best’ merely ‘middlebrow’. Equally, the term ‘literature’ is not useful or relevant in the criticism of children’s novels, and the most valued texts in children’s literature may be precisely those that have the least to offer the adult.

The Origins of Progressive Education

2001 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. Reese
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Progressive Education ◽  
Academic Standards ◽  
Popular Press ◽  
Economic Productivity ◽  
Educational Discourse ◽  
Child Centered ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Way Of Thinking

By the dawn of the twentieth century, a new way of thinking about the nature of the child, classroom methods, and the purposes of the school increasingly dominated educational discourse. Something loosely called progressive education, especially its more child-centered aspects, became part of a larger revolt against the formalism of the schools and an assault on tradition. Our finest scholars, such as Lawrence A. Cremin, in his magisterial study of progressivism forty years ago, have tried to explain the origins and meaning of this movement. One should be humbled by their achievements and by the magnitude of the subject. Variously defined, progressivism continues to find its champions and critics, the latter occasionally blaming it for low economic productivity, immorality among the young, and the decline of academic standards. In the popular press, John Dewey's name is often invoked as the evil genius behind the movement, even though he criticized sugar-coated education and letting children do as they please. While scholars doubt whether any unified, coherent movement called progressivism ever existed, its offspring, progressive education, apparently did exist, wreaking havoc on the schools.

Handel to Tempah

Migrant City ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 281-306
Author(s):  
Panikos Panayi
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
National Level ◽  
Cultural Transfer ◽  
External Influences ◽  
Short Run ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Evolution Of Music

This chapter explores how migrants have contributed to the evolution of music in London. Despite episodes of xenophobia in the London musical scene, xenophilia became stronger, partly driven by the fact that both music and musicians inevitably migrate. This is so that, while national traditions of music may emerge, the process of cultural transfer involving both sound and people mean that such traditions cannot remain sealed off from external influences, even if they may develop national-level identities, at least in the short run. While music and musicians crossed European boundaries, during the twentieth century both performers and their tunes have increasingly spanned global and consequently racial divides. The German assertion that nineteenth-century Britain constituted a ‘Land ohne Musik’ (land without music), while an exaggeration, partly explains the arrival of foreign musicians to Victorian London and the eras before and since. The constant settlement and visits by musicians to the British capital since the early eighteenth century meant that London did not become a city without music, even if the tunes and those who played them often originated from abroad.

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