Introducing Children's Literature: From Romanticism to Postmodernism

ISBN-13: 9780415204101 / Angielski / Twarda / 2002 / 208 str.

Deborah Cogan Thacker; Deborah Cogan Thacker; Jean Webb

Opis

Introducing Children's Literature is an ideal guide to reading children's literature through the perspective of literary history. Focusing on the major literary movements from Romanticism to Postmodernism, Thacker and Webb examine the concerns of each period and the ways in which these concerns influence and are influenced by the children's literature of the time.
Each section begins with a general chapter, which explains the relationship between the major issues of each literary period and the formal and thematic qualities of children's texts. Close readings of selected texts follow to demonstrate the key defining characteristics of the form of writing and the literary movements.
Original in its approach, this book sets children's literature within the context of literary movements and adult literature. It is essential reading for students studying writing for children. Books discussed include:
*Louisa May Alcott's Little Women
* Charles Kingsley's The Water-Babies
*Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland
*Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz
*Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden
*P.L.Travers' Mary Poppins
*E.B.White's Charlotte's Web
*Philip Pullman's Clockwork.

Spis treści

Preface and Introduction Section One: Romanticism: 1. Imagining the Child 2. The King of the Golden River 3. Closing the garret door: a feminist reading of Little Women Section Two: Nineteenth-Century Literature: 4. Victorianism, Empire and the Paternal Voice 5. Reality and Enigma in The Water-Babies 6. Alice as Subject in the Logic of WonderlandSection Three: The Fin de Siecle 7. Testing Boundaries 8. The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz: Pleasure without Nightmares 9. Romanticism vs Empire in The Secret GardenSection Four: Modernism 10. New Voices, New Threats 11. Connecting with Mary Poppins 12. Spinning the Word: Charlotte's Web 13. Real or Story?: The BorrowersSection Five: Postmodernism: 14. Playful Subversion 15. Clockwork, A Fairy tale for a postmodern time 16. a postmodern reflection of the genre of fairy tale: The Stinky Cheese Man and other Fairly Stupid Tales Bibliography

O autorze

Deborah Cogan Thacker is Field Chair for English Studies and Creative and Contemporary Writing at the University of Gloucestershire.
Jean Webb is Director of the Primary English and Children's Literature Research Centre and Associate Head of the Graduate School at University College Worcester.