Studies In Children's Literature, 1500-2000

by Keenan, Celia; Thompson, Mary Shine

• ISBN13: 9781851828777
• ISBN10: 185182877X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-12-31
• Publisher: Four Courts Press

Summary

Ranging from the fundamental question, whether a childrens literature is possible, or what its formal and contextual parameters might be, to issues of contemporary cultural studies (postcolonialism, gender, race and class) this essay collection inserts childrens literature into literary, theoretical and historical debate. From English renaissance childrens reading, it shifting to Shaws Castle Blair, an ambivalent metaphor for a nineteenth-century Ireland seeking postcolonial self determination, and a study of wild Irish girls civilising education in England in De Horne Vaizeys and Meades novels. The book interrogates Hodgson Burnetts obsessions with childhood innocence and her problematic adult-child relationships; the golliwog transformed from a transgressive figure into a non-PC icon; and schoolboys from the Jennings series and Greyfriars to Huck Finn and Harry Potter. Blyton, Dillon, Frost, Lynch, Parkinson, Ransome, Thomas, and Whelan come under scrutiny, as does the link b

Table of Contents

PREFACE	7	(2)
Celia Keenan
Introduction	9	(10)
Mary Shine Thompson
Reading English renaissance children and the early modern stage	19	(12)
A.J. Piesse
Rebuilding Castle Blair: a reading of Flora Shaw's 1878 children's novel	31	(7)
Robert Dunbar
The wild Irish girls of L.T. Meade and Mrs George De Horne Vaizey	38	(6)
Carole Dunbar
The voyeur	44	(10)
Áine Nic Gabhann
School stories	54	(16)
Declan Kiberd
Golliwog: genealogy of a non-PC icon	70	(9)
David Rudd
Colonialization of food in children's literature: apple pie or Turkish delight?	79	(7)
Ann Alston
Robert Frost and Edward Thomas: poets' stories	86	(8)
Deborah Thacker
The development of Patricia Lynch's writing in the light of an exploration of new archival material	94	(9)
Margaret Burke
The Talbot Press and its religious publications for children	103	(9)
Maly Flynn
Forging national identity: the adventure stories of Eilis Dillon	112	(8)
Ciara Ni Bhroin
Wars of independence: the construction of Irish histories in the work of Gerard Whelan and Siobhan Parkinson	120	(10)
Pádraic Whyte
A theory without a centre: developing childist criticism	130	(8)
Sebastien Chapleau
Alchemy and alco pops: breaking the ideology trap	138	(10)
Kimberley Reynolds
The hero in the twenty-first century: transgressing the heroic gender construct	148	(7)
Jane O'Hanlon
Crocodiles and naked pigs: motifs and motives in Max Velthuijs's picturehooks	155	(7)
Howard Hollands and Victoria de Rijke
Artists' books for a cross-audience	162	(9)
Sandra L. Beckett
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS	171	(4)
INDEX	175