Audacious kids : the classic American children's story / Jerry Griswold.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Griswold, Jerome.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Children's stories, American--History and criticism.

Children's stories, American.

Children--Books and reading--United States.

Children.

Children--Books and reading.

United States.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

xxii, 339 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

Edition:

Revised edition.

Place of Publication:

Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014.

Summary:

Often called the Golden Age of Children's Books, the years stretching from the Civil War to World War I were a remarkable epoch in juvenile literature, an era when the best authors on both sides of the Atlantic wrote some of their finest work primarily for children. In Audacious Kids, Jerry Griswold provides a groundbreaking and lucid study of twelve of these classic American children's tales, including such time-honored stories as Little Women, Tom Sawyer, The Secret Garden, and The Wizard of Oz. Griswold's most remarkable insight is that, fundamentally, these twelve books all tell essentially the same story: a child is orphaned, makes a journey, is adopted and harassed by adults, and eventually triumphs over them and comes into his or her own. A leading figure in the study of children's literature, Griswold also reveals that these tales emphasize motifs that are distinctly American, such as positive thinking, concern with health, and the concealment of sex and violence, and he shows how these secular parables replaced religion with psychology and preached gospels of emotional self-control and optimism. In this revised edition, which is aimed at students, scholars, and general readers, Griswold has updated the text throughout and added a new preface, introduction, and select bibliography. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part 1 Oedipal Patterns

1 There's No Place but Home: The Wizard of Oz 43

2 The Long Parricidal Dream: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 57

3 Spinster Aunt, Sugar Daddy, and Child-Woman: Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm 92

Part 2 Manuals of Republicanism

4 Motherland, Fatherland, or Oedipal Politics: Little Lord Fauntleroy 115

5 Ur of the Ur-Stories: Tarzan of the Apes 127

6 Impostors, Succession, and Faux Histories: The Prince and the Pauper 145

Part 3 The Theater of Feelings

7 Remorse and Regrets: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 169

8 Bosom Enemies: Little Women 184

9 Bread and Circuses: Toby Tyler 196

Part 4 The Gospel of Optimism

10 Sunny Land, Angry Waters: Hans drinker 219

11 Positive Thinking: The Secret Garden 233

12 Radical Innocence: Pollyanna 250.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 321-326) and index.

ISBN:

9781421414577

1421414570

OCLC:

868427736