The Presence of the Past in Children's Literature

by Lucas, Ann Lawson

• ISBN13: 9780313324833
• ISBN10: 0313324832
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-09-30
• Publisher: Praeger Pub Text

Summary

Time is one of the most prominent themes in the relatively young genre of children's literature, for the young, like adults, want to know about the past. The historical novel of the West grew out of Romanticism, with its exploration of the inner world of feeling, and it grew to full vigor in the era of imperialism and the exploration of the physical world. From the end of the 18th century, children's books flourished, partly in response to these cultural and political influences. After Darwin, Freud, and Einstein, literary works began to grapple with skepticism about the nature of time itself. This book explores how children's writers have presented the theme and concept of time past. While the book looks primarily at literature of the 19th and 20th centuries, it considers a broad range of historical material treated in works from that period. Included are discussions of such topics as Joan of Arc in children's literature, the legacy of Robinson Crusoe, colonial and postcolonial children's literature, the Holocaust, and the supernatural. International in scope, the volume examines history and collective memory in Portuguese children's fiction, Australian history in picture books, Norwegian children's literature, and literary treatments of the great Irish famine. So too, the expert contributors are from diverse countries and backgrounds.

Author Biography

ANN LAWSON LUCAS is Senior Lecturer in Italian at the University of Hull.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Past in the Present of Children's Literature by Ann Lawson Lucas<BR>

Presenting the Past--Writers, Books, Critics: Theoretical Approaches<BR>

Fiction versus History: History's Ghosts by Danielle Thaler<BR>

From Literary Text to Literary Field: Boys' Fiction in Norway between the Two World Wars: a Re-reading by Rolf Romoren<BR>

Historical Friction: Shifting Ideas of Objective Reality in History and Fiction by Deborah Stevenson<BR>

Myths Modernized: Adapting Archetypes from Fact and Fiction<BR>

In and Out of History: Jeanne d'Arc by Maurice Boutet de Monvel by Isabelle Nieres-Chevrel<BR>

Re-inventing the Maid: Images of Joan of Arc in French and English Children's Literature by Penny Brown<BR>

History and Collective Memory in Contemporary Portuguese Literature for the Young by Francesca Blockeel<BR>

The Descendants of Robinson Crusoe in North American Children's Literature by Tina L. Hanlon<BR>

Adventures in History<BR>

Constructions of History in Victorian and Edwardian Children's Books by Thomas Kullmann<BR>

'Tis a Hundred Years Since: G. A. Henty's With Clive in India (1884) and Philip Pullman's The Tin Princess (1994) by Dennis Butts<BR>

Colonial, Postcolonial<BR>

Doctor Dolittle and the Empire: Hugh Lofting's Response to British Colonialism by David Steege<BR>

Picturing Australian History: Visual Texts in Nonfiction for Children by Clare Bradford<BR>

Narrative Tensions: Telling Slavery, Showing Violence by Paula T. Connolly<BR>

Narrative Challenges: The Great Irish Famine in Recent Stories for Children by Celia Keenan<BR>

War, Postwar<BR>

On the Use of Books for Children in Creating the German National Myth by Zohar Shavit<BR>

Reverberations of the Anne Frank Diaries in Contemporary German and British Children's Literature by Susan Tebbutt<BR>

War Boys: The Autobiographical Representation of History in Text and Image in Michael Foreman's War Boy and Tomi Ungerer's Die Gedanken sind frei (1993) by Gillian Lathey<BR>

Modern, Postmodern: Questions of Time and Place<BR>

"House and Garden": The Time-Slip Story in the Aftermath of the Second World War by Linda Hall<BR>

The Past Re-Imagined: History and Literary Creation in British Children's Novels after World War Two by Adrienne E. Gavin<BR>

England's Dark Ages? The North-East in Robert Westall's The Wind Eye and Andrew Taylor's The Coal House by Pamela Knights<BR>

Masculine, Feminism--and the History of Fantasy<BR>

Re-Presenting a History of the Future: Dan Dare and Eagle by Tony Watkins<BR>

The "Masculine Mystique" Revisioned in The Earthsea Quartet by Yoshida Junko<BR>

Witch-figures in Recent Children's Fiction: The Subarltern and the Subversive by John Stephens<BR>

The Future for Children's Literature<BR>

The Duty of Internet Internationalism: Roald Dahls of the World, Unite! by Jean Perrot<BR>

Selected Bibliography<BR>

Index