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

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Joy, Louise, 1979- author.

Series:

Bloomsbury perspectives on children's literature

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Children--Books and reading--History.

Children.

Children's literature, English--History and criticism.

Children's literature, English.

Reader-response criticism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

London, England : Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019.

Summary:

"Literature's Children offers a new way of thinking about how literature for children functions didactically. It analyzes the nature of the practical critical activity which the child reader carries out, emphasizing what the child does to the text rather than what he or she receives from it. Through close readings of a range of works for children which have shaped our understanding of what children's literature entails, including works by Isaac Watts, John Newbery, Kate Greenaway, E. Nesbit, Kenneth Grahame, J.R.R. Tolkien and Malcolm Saville, it demonstrates how the critical child resists the processes of idealization in operation in and through such texts. Bringing into dialogue 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 relations between literary aesthetics and literary didacticism."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

Contents:

Introduction

Part I: The Critical Child. 1. Eighteenth-century poetry and the complexity of the child's mind ; 2. Laughter and the permission to critique

Part II: The Art of Idealisation. 3. On seeing: Kate Greenaway's Under the Window ; 4. On crying: E. Nesbit's The Railway Children ; 5. On being (bored): Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows ; 6. On talking: J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit ; 7. On loving: Malcolm Saville's Lone Pine Series

Coda

Works Cited

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

ISBN:

9781472577214

1472577213

9781472577207

1472577205

OCLC:

1084331680