Representations of China in British Children's Fiction, 1851-1911. by Shih-Wen Chen

ISBN-13: 9781409447351 / Angielski / Twarda / 2013 / 218 str.

Shih-wen Chen

Opis

In her extensively researched exploration of China in British children s literature, Shih-Wen Chen provides a sustained critique of the reductive dichotomies that have limited insight into the cultural and educative role these fictions played in disseminating ideas and knowledge about China. Chen considers a range of different genres and types of publication-travelogue storybooks, historical novels, adventure stories, and periodicals-to demonstrate the diversity of images of China in the Victorian and Edwardian imagination. Turning a critical eye on popular and prolific writers such as Anne Bowman, William Dalton, Edwin Harcourt Burrage, Bessie Marchant, G.A. Henty, and Charles Gilson, Chen shows how Sino-British relations were influential in the representation of China in children s literature, challenges the notion that nineteenth-century children s literature simply parroted the dominant ideologies of the age, and offers insights into how attitudes towards children s relationship with knowledge changed over the course of the century. Her book provides a fresh context for understanding how China was constructed in the period from 1851 to 1911 and sheds light on British cultural history and the history and uses of children s literature."

Spis treści

Contents: A kaleidoscope of knowledge: children, knowledge, and China in Victorian and Edwardian Britain; Exploring the Celestial Kingdom: William Dalton and Anne Bowman’s vision of China; From comic trickster to brilliant detective: E. Harcourt Burrage’s ’immortal’ Ching-Ching; Heroes and hostile hordes: representing the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864); China against the allies: interpreting the Boxer Uprising (1899-1901); Conclusion: quilts and kaleidoscopes: visions of China in the literary imagination; Appendix: timeline; Works cited; Index.

O autorze

Shih-Wen Chen is Lecturer in Literary Studies at Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests include children’s literature, print culture, and histories of reading.