Literature's children : the critical child and the art of idealization / Louise Joy.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Joy, Louise, 1979- author.

Series:

Bloomsbury perspectives on children's literature.

Bloomsbury perspectives on children's literature

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Children's literature--20th century--History and criticism.

Children's literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (vii, 247 pages) : 1 illustration

Place of Publication:

London : Bloomsbury Academic, [2019]

Summary:

"Literature's Children offers a new way of thinking about how literature for children functions didactically. It analyses the nature of the practical critical activity which the child reader carries out, emphasising what the child does to the text rather than what he or she receives from it. Through close readings of a range of so-called 'Golden Age' novels for children which continue to shape our understanding of what children's literature entails, including The Railway Children, The Wind in the Willows, The Hobbit, and mid-20th-century series fiction, it demonstrates how the child critic resists the processes of idealisation at work in such texts. By bringing together ideas from literary theory and the philosophy of education, drawing in particular on the work of the philosopher John Dewey, it provides a compelling new account of the complex relationships between literary aesthetics and literary didacticism"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Eighteenth-century poetry and the complexity of the child's mind

Laughter and the permission to critique

On seeing : Kate Greenaway's Under the window

On crying : E. Nesbit's The railway children

On being (bored) : Kenneth Grahame's The wind in the willows

On talking : J.R.R. Tolkien's The hobbit

On loving : Malcolm Saville's Lone pine series.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781472577214

1472577213

9781472577207

1472577205