How did Peter Hunt describe children’s lit?
- Children’s lit is often regarded as an oxymoron
- Child= immaturity
- Literature=sophistication
Gubar: Why is “literature read by young people” too broad of a definition?
Gubar states that “literature read by young people” is too broad because it could mean any text read by children- including porn and romance
Gubar: Why is “literature published for young people” not a good definition?
- What about texts that appeared before 18th C booksellers such as fairy tales, myths and chapbooks?
- Children lit is relatively new and has always attracted a variety of readers
Gubar: Why is “literature addressed to children by authors who conceptualize young people as a distinct audience” not a good definition?
Because authors reject the idea that they are writing for a specific age group
Publishers/readers define their books as YA
ex: Crossover titles such as Harry Potter
Significance of McDowell: (Fiction for Children and Adults: Some Essential Differences)
Definer or Anti-Definer?
McDowell: “Definer”- believed that:
- Children think quantitatively different than adults
- Children are more active than ruminant
- Children’s lit is simple and formulaic and full of action not description or introspection
Significance of Perry Nodelman: (The Hidden Adult)
Definer or Anti-Definer?
Nodelman: “Definer” believed that:
- Children’s lit is simpler and less complete than adult literature
- Plots do not diverge greatly from the same basic story pattern
- Child readers are imagined by a series of adults
- The adult is central to literature: the adults who imagine and produce the literature, the adults who purchase
Problems with “The Hidden Adult” argument
Assumes that all children’s lit is written by adults
-what about oral storytelling, child authors, fan fiction
Significance of John Rowe Townsend
Definer or Anti-Definer?
Gubar: “Anti-Definer”
Wrote “standard criticism for Childrens Lit”
He argues that it is wrong to suggest that children possess a body of text as they are all written, published, reviewed and often read by adults- completely adult controlled
-Children are not a separate form of life from adults
Significance of Jack Zipes
Definer or Anti-Definer?
Gubar: “Anti-Definer”
-He argued that there is no such thing as children lit- there has never been a literature conceived for children by children and never will be
Significance of Jacqueline Rose
Definer or Anti-Definer?
Gubar: “Anti-Definer”
Wrote “The Case of Peter Pan-The Impossibility of Children’s Lit”
-Children’s lit is impossible- it is not about real children rather adult anxieties and fantasies about children and childhood
There is no child
Mariah Gubars Main Argument- The “Not Definer”
- The problem with the definer and antidefniner is that they cut young people out of the picture entirely
- We can give up on the unenlightening task of generating a definition without giving up on the idea that children lit is a viable category
- Use “piecemeal”- focus out attention in different subareas and acknowledge messiness and diversity
What example does Gubar use to reinforce her “Not Definer” Argument ?
- Gubar draws on Wittgenstein and the example of “games”
- Board games and olympic games have nothing in common rather a complicated network of similarities and relationships
Main Argument of “No More Adventures in Wonderland”
Tatar-argues that past children’s lit evil characters contain horror but the juvenile aspects combat this horror
- However childrens lit today presents a lot of dark materials and a large dose of adult reality
- Reminisces on the “golden age of childhood”
The concept of childhood as we understand it began developing when? Why?
The concept of childhood as we understand it today didn’t really begin developing until the seventeenth century
-Child/ infant mortality was extremely high
How is the notion of childhood a social construction?
The notion of childhood is a social construction because we understand it through a mediation of social, cultural and political forces
When did children’s lit become a phenomenon?
Children’s lit is a recent phenomenon- roots in the 18th C
Children’s Lit in the Classical Period (500 BCE- 400 CE)
- There was no distinguishing between adult and children’s lit
- Children’s heard same stories as their parents ex: Homer’s Iliad
- Oral culture- myth and stories circulate orally
Children’s Lit in the Middle Ages (476- 1400 CE)
- Widespread poverty and illiteracy
- social and political life dominated by Catholic Church
- Books: rare and expensive (Bible could take up to 3 years)
- Russell: As the classical world- oral tradition was the principle entertainment for most people
- Popular Stories: Arthurian Legend (England) El Cid (Spain) Beowulf (Scandinavia)
Children’s Lit in the Renaissance- Approx 1400
1450: Gutenberg moveable type
- Books are cheaper, easier to produce- emergence of a literary culture
- Mass production of books and mass education becomes possible
- Books of Courtesy
What is a “book of courtesy”?
- lessons in proper behaviour for young men
- become popular as a part of Renaissance humanism
- focus on secular and classical texts in addition to religious ideas
What did renaissance children actually read?
- The Renaissance was a period of hatred between Roman Catholics and Protestants-bloodshed
- Many children read John Foxe- Book of Martyrs- anti-Catholic work full of violent deaths
What does Orbis Sensualim Pictus mean? (John Comenius)
Translated as: ‘the World of Things Obvious to the Senses Drawn in Pictures
What is generally considered to be the first picture book intended to educate young children?
- Orbis Sensualim Pictus-the World of Things Obvious to the Senses Drawn in Pictures (Comenius)
- Unusual-Published in Latin and German- contains 150 pictures representing activities like beer, killing animals and gardening
What does Orbis Sensualism Pictus demonstrate?
- children’s lit is and has always been an unusual genre- intentions that do not always line up with its effects
- How people read use adapt and recirculate children’s lit might not always fit comfortably with how we imagine the “purpose” of the genre
