scholarly journals "You Know Very Well You're Not Real": Victorian Children's Fantasy Literature and the  Problem of Writing the Child

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Beatrice Turner
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Cultural Construction ◽  
Fantasy Literature ◽  
The Real ◽  
The North ◽  
Innocent Child ◽  
Return Journey ◽  
Child Reader

<p>This thesis examines eight "Golden Age"children's fantasy narratives and uncovers their engagement with the "impossibility" of writing the child. Only recently has children's literature criticism recognised that the child in the text and the implied child reader cannot stand in for the "real" child reader. This is an issue which other literary criticism has been at pains to acknowledge, but which children's literature critics have neglected. I have based my reading on critics such as Karin Lesnik-Oberstein, Jacqueline Rose and Perry Nodelman, all of whom are concerned to expose the term "child" as an adult cultural construction, one which becomes problematic when it is made to stand in for real children. I read the child in the text as an entity which contains and is tainted by the trace of the adult who writes it; it is therefore impossible for a pure, innocent child to exist in language, the province of the adult. Using Derrida's conception of the trace and his famous statement that "there is nothing outside of the text," I demonstrate that the idea of the innocent child, which was central to Rousseau's Emile and the Romantic Child which is supposed to have been authored by Wordsworth and inherited wholesale by his Victorian audience, is possible only as a theory beyond language. The Victorian texts I read, which include Lewis Carroll's Alice texts, George MacDonald's At the Back of the North Wind and the Princess texts, Kingsley's The Water Babies and Mrs. Molesworth's The Cuckoo Clock and The Tapestry Room, all explore different ways in which the child might be successfully articulated: in language, in death, and through the return journey into fantasy. While all the texts attempt to reach the child, all ultimately foreground the failure of this enterprise. When a language is created which is child-authored, it fails as communication and meaning breaks down; when the adult ceases to write the narrative, the child within it ceases to exist.</p>

scholarly journals "You Know Very Well You're Not Real": Victorian Children's Fantasy Literature and the  Problem of Writing the Child

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Beatrice Turner
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Cultural Construction ◽  
Fantasy Literature ◽  
The Real ◽  
The North ◽  
Innocent Child ◽  
Return Journey ◽  
Child Reader

<p>This thesis examines eight "Golden Age"children's fantasy narratives and uncovers their engagement with the "impossibility" of writing the child. Only recently has children's literature criticism recognised that the child in the text and the implied child reader cannot stand in for the "real" child reader. This is an issue which other literary criticism has been at pains to acknowledge, but which children's literature critics have neglected. I have based my reading on critics such as Karin Lesnik-Oberstein, Jacqueline Rose and Perry Nodelman, all of whom are concerned to expose the term "child" as an adult cultural construction, one which becomes problematic when it is made to stand in for real children. I read the child in the text as an entity which contains and is tainted by the trace of the adult who writes it; it is therefore impossible for a pure, innocent child to exist in language, the province of the adult. Using Derrida's conception of the trace and his famous statement that "there is nothing outside of the text," I demonstrate that the idea of the innocent child, which was central to Rousseau's Emile and the Romantic Child which is supposed to have been authored by Wordsworth and inherited wholesale by his Victorian audience, is possible only as a theory beyond language. The Victorian texts I read, which include Lewis Carroll's Alice texts, George MacDonald's At the Back of the North Wind and the Princess texts, Kingsley's The Water Babies and Mrs. Molesworth's The Cuckoo Clock and The Tapestry Room, all explore different ways in which the child might be successfully articulated: in language, in death, and through the return journey into fantasy. While all the texts attempt to reach the child, all ultimately foreground the failure of this enterprise. When a language is created which is child-authored, it fails as communication and meaning breaks down; when the adult ceases to write the narrative, the child within it ceases to exist.</p>

scholarly journals Realization of the Comic in the Story by A. Borisova "Zapiski dlya moikh potomkov" (Notes for My Descendants)

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (9) ◽  
pp. 202-211
Author(s):  
Daria I. Frolkina
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Research Material ◽  
Real People ◽  
Child Reader ◽  
Children's Speech ◽  
And Linguistics

In the following article, we explore the ways to create a comic effect in the in the stories of the modern Yakut children’s writer A. Borisova Zapiski dlya moikh potomkov (Notes for My Descendants). The comedic tropes are analyzed on three levels: the characters, the situations, and the language. Children's literature has always been particularly humorous and entertaining, which is vividly seen in the works of the best domestic children's writers (N. Nosov, V. Dragunsky, V. Golyavkin etc.). Because of this, in literary criticism and linguistics there is an extensive classification of various techniques for creating a comedic effect. E. Garanina, N. M. Rotanova, I. V. Tsikusheva and others are engaged in the study of these techniques using children's literature as their research material. Nevertheless, the major works are still devoted to the issues of linguistic comedic effects which determines the relevance of this study. The comic effect of the story by A. Borisova is achieved in several ways, including those of non-literary nature, for example, theatrical circus in the form of classic buffoonery. The comedy is delivered by the main character of the story – the restless girl Valentinka whose defining trait is her ability to get into various funny situations. Valentine’s character is outlined from different sides; the negative sides of the girl are, too, shown to the reader. Because of this, the author emphasizes that the protagonist is a realistic character with all the positive and negative traits typical for real people. Thus the author achieves one of the goals of children’s literature: to convey the important moral and moral values to the child reader using the example of a young protagonist. The comedic elements of fictional situations are based on unexpected or comic contrast caused by a misunderstandings. Language-based comedy is represented quite widely and is based on various types of wordplay, for example, using polysemy, phraseological units or language paradoxes, incorrect word reproduction and imitation of word formation typical for children’s speech. Summing up, we can say that the stories of the Yakut author A. Borisova Zapiski dlya moikh potomkov (Notes for My Descendants) demonstrate various ways of creating a comic effect on a variety of text levels.

“Who Are You?”: Modernism, Childhood, and Historical Consciousness in Faulkner’s The Wishing Tree

2017 ◽  
pp. 122-134
Author(s):  
Hannah Godwin
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
Creative Potential ◽  
Young Readers ◽  
Child Reader

This chapter considers an “uneasy yet potentially fruitful confluence” between modernist writing and children's literature in the only Faulkner tale penned specifically for children. Drawing on “the Romantic reverence for the child as transcendent and inspirational,” a reverence qualified to some degree by twentieth-century psychoanalysis and its suspicion of childhood innocence, modernist artists portrayed the child as “a vessel of consciousness” and “instinctual, intense perceptions,” and thus a source of “defamiliarizing perspectives” that fostered artistic experimentation. In The Wishing Tree, writing for young readers may have helped Faulkner awaken his creative potential. The Wishing Tree's rich mix of fantasy and history “works to imbue the child reader with a sense of historical consciousness” while recognizing her as the bearer “of a more hopeful future”.

A (des)Construção da Concepção Hegemônica da Infância: um Estudo do Filme Alice no País das Maravilhas

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 398
Author(s):  
Luana Santos Nogueira Garcia ◽  
Maritza Maciel Castrillon Maldonado
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Mato Grosso ◽  
The Real ◽  
Education School ◽  
Reflective Study

Este trabalho se insere em um projeto de pesquisa da Universidade do Estado de Mato Grosso denominado: “Cinema, Infâncias e Diferença: problematizando a educação, o cotidiano da escola e o currículo”. Tendo como objetivo discutir a influência do filme: Alice no país das maravilhas (1951) para entender como esta obra cinematográfica esfacela, desmonta e descontrói a idealização de infância. Ainda, se apoia no pensamento de Deleuze (2007) para demonstrar que a vida real é cheia de paradoxos, que fogem da lógica, carregando antagonismos, produzindo múltiplos sentidos e desencadeando diferentes representações. O trabalho tem como proposta metodológica a pesquisa bibliográfica e o estudo reflexivo sobre o filme de Tim Burton. Os resultados deste estudo permitem problematizar e pensar diferentes “concepções” de infância já colocadas e instituídas, que (des)compõe o sentido real de ser criança. Palavras-chave: Literatura Infantil. Infância. Paradoxos. AbstractThis work is part of a research project of  Universidade do Estado de Mato Grosso denominated “Cinema, Childhood and Difference: questioning education, school everyday and the curriculum”. In order to discuss the influence of the film Alice in the Wonderland (1951) to understand how this film destroys , disassembles, deconstructs the idealization of childhood. Also, it corroborates the thought of Deleuze (2007) to demonstrate that real life is full of paradoxes that are out of logic, carrying antagonisms, producing multiple senses and triggering different representations. The work has as methodological approach the bibliographical research and the reflective study on the Tim Burton’s film. The results of this study allow to problematize and think about different “conceptions” of childhood already placed and imposed that (des) composes the real sense of being a child. Keywords: Children's Literature. Childhood. Paradoxes.

scholarly journals Writing a Novel with Roma Primary School Children: Tensions in Disrupting Aetonormativity

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Dobson ◽  
Lisa Stephenson ◽  
Ana De Arede
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Primary School ◽  
Magical Realism ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Primary School Children ◽  
The North ◽  
Minority Ethnic Groups

Abstract Story Makers Press (SMP) is a University-based publisher which co-constructs stories with under-represented groups of children in order to diversify representation in children’s literature and disrupt the way adult perceptions of normality pattern children’s literature (aetonormativity). In this paper we analyse six drama and creative writing workshops run by SMP with Czech and Slovak Roma children from an inner city primary school in the north of England to co-construct a story about climate change. Our analysis identifies how in developing the story, the children were often reluctant to draw upon their funds of knowledge relating to their Roma backgrounds, instead Westernising their protagonists and settings. We also explore how the children disrupt aetonormativity by interweaving magical elements into realistic narrative about climate change in order to establish a genre of magical realism. Finally, we identify how this genre of magical realism is problematic when considering stereotypical depictions of Roma characters in children’s literature and how changes were made to our story in light of a critical race theory reading of the first draft. As well as helping SMP to refine its processes, this analysis suggests that minority groups such as Roma need to be able to draw upon more literary representations of Roma in order to shape their creative outputs and that the curriculum needs to focus on developing children’s critical responses to the representation of minority ethnic groups in children’s literature.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document