The Enlightenment and Other Illusions

In his introduction, Geoffrey Summerfield observes that the eighteenth-century Enlightenment was by no means uniformly enlightened, especially where children's literature was concerned. A great deal of material for the young that purported to be enlightened, and which set out to enrich young readers with useful knowledge, in fact also improverished them emotionally. Summerfield contends that, in the face of this situation, the craving for the fantastic was largely satisfied throughout the period by the so-called "chapbooks," much to the chagrin of contemporary literary moralists and didactic writers. It is Summerfield's aim to contribute to the rehabilitation of the powers of imagination, in this case by setting forth the degree to which the officially sanctioned children's literature of those years actually contributed to the narrowing of its own supposed objectives.

Summerfield embarks on a path that leads through a discussion of the Lockean theory of education, of Locke's popularizer Addison, of Rousseauism and science, and of the work of Thomas Day and Maria Edgeworth. Edgeworth is important because she continues the eighteenth-century concept of the children's book well into the nine-teenth century. The works of Lamb and Godwin are placed by Summerfield somewhere "between confusion and compromise." In William Blake's "Songs of Innocence" and "Songs of Experience," the author finds the literary response to Enlightenment didacticism. Book Five of Wordsworth's The Prelude serves him as proof of the Enlightenment's narrowness of vision with respect to the acculturation of children. Summerfield interprets Wordsworth's poem as a powerful defense of freedom and fantasy in children's lives.

Locke's theoretical insights were especially significant insofar as they contrasted with texts like those of Jeremy Taylor and John Bunyan, which, according to Summerfield, set out to prepare the reader not so much for life as for the afterlife. Alongside these tracts, whether concerned with secular or expressly religious subject matter, the chapbooks asserted themselves. As the Enlightenment progressed,

From We Are Seven by William Wordsworth, illustrator unidentified. Originally published by James Kendrew of York, 1801 or after. Reprinted from Fantasy & Reason.

however, the chapbook's status as an underground literature became increasingly pronounced. It was maintained that such books were anti-rationalist, vulgar, and riddled with a dubious morality. Here it must be remembered that after the passing of Locke himself, the Enlightenment position lost much of its original authority, becoming a curious amalgam of odd bits of the philospher's pronouncements, of useful reflections and religious enthusiasms. If Locke valued the role of play in the learning process, that was soon transformed into "serious instruction," the fostering of a continuous stance of "paying attention" on the part of children. The nadir of this development for Summerfield was the publication of John Newbery's Little Pretty Pocket Book (1744), which he construes as an assortment of John Locke's thoughts brought down to the level of irreducible banality. Its program, conceived in a spirit of calculating mercantilism, was submission to reason and the repression of all passion. Finally, in the case of Maria Edgeworth, we find the Enlightenment trinity—Reason, Morality, and Utility—applied superficially to the characters of her moral tales. In her view, fantasy is not merely a faculty that can be misused or that can lead to confusion and madness. Fantasy is in essence wedded to confusion. A frank partisan of the subsequent

From two of the many editions of The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes by Oliver Goldsmith (?), illustrations copied from 1765 Newbery edition. (Above) publisher unidentified, c. 1780. (Below) published by W. Osborne & T. Griffin, 1782.

Romantic literature, Summerfield sets forth the central contradiction of the Enlightenment: "that the didactic realists, committed to the fabrication of an ostensibly 'real world,' had actually produced an anaemic figment, for which one could feel absolutely no genuine heartfelt interest, whereas the...