The state of contemporary children's literature criticism

A critic may write with assurance as long as the critical institution itself is thought to be unproblematical. Once that institution is thrown into radical question, then one would expect individual acts of criticism to become troubled and self-doubting. The fact that such acts continue today, apparently in all their traditional confidence, is doubtless a sign that the crisis of the critical institutions has either not been deeply enough registered, or is being actively evaded.

(Eagleton, Preface)

The above quote comes from one of Eagleton’s earlier works, The Function of Criticism (1984). In said work, Eagleton argues, as the above quote suggests, that “criticism today lacks all substantive social function. It is either part of the public relations branch of the literary industry, or a matter wholly internal to the academies” (Preface). Eagleton’s comments came to mind when I read Hunt’s first anthology, the ahistoricist Children’s Literature: The Development of Criticism (1990). Eagleton’s comments returned again as I read Hunt’s second, companion anthology, Literature for Children: Contemporary Criticism (1992). The essays in the anthology make it seem as though children’s literature criticism is keeping up, not quite with the Joneses, but at least with the developments in the fields of criticism and literature. This is fine, for children’s literature criticism needs to keep abreast of things. But, still, the question, for me at least, remains: What is the “social function” (Eagleton, Preface) of criticism? This question is particularly pressing because as we enter an era of global capitalism (an economic system supposedly meant to benefit all human beings) and colonial rule, the number of impoverished children around the world increases (Boyden 1991). Precisely what is the function of this institution called criticism?

On the whole, Peter Hunt’s 1992 anthology Literature for Children: Contemporary Criticism proceeds more or less confidently—unproblematically, in Eagleton’s terms—in its approach to the act of criticism. Nothing about a crisis brewing. As Hunt writes in his introduction, “The essays and extracts reprinted here . . . are intended . . . to suggest the kind of links increasingly made in the field [of children’s literature]” (1). The anthology represents the economy of criticism as business as usual. To be sure, Hunt notes that critics still need to investigate certain areas of children’s literature—three “gaps” (14) as he calls them—that revolve around poetry, education, and drama. And, to be sure, individual writers see themselves and their work within philosophy, history, and criticism. Paul, for example, sets her essay in the context of mimetic theories of representation and fractal geometry (contexts my students find difficult yet intriguing). Watkins sets his essay in the context of cultural studies and new historicism, arguing that The Wind in the Willows and The Wizard of Oz articulate the kinds of “mythic proto-narratives” (184) that structure and reinforce nationalist ideologies. But neither these essays nor the anthology as a whole problematizes criticism or the role of those who practice criticism in colleges and universities. The anthology tries to “further the interaction of disparate disciplines and attitudes, and to continue the progress of children’s literature criticism, of all kinds, towards greater rigour” (16). The march of history. The march of criticism. Nothing about a crisis or an evasion.

Yet, in the anthology’s first essay, Peter Hollindale’s well-known “Ideology and the Children’s Book” (19–40), I sense a potential crisis in the making, another gap that needs exploring much more fully. To understand the depth of the gap, I want to refer to Hunt’s introduction to Hollindale’s essay. Hunt describes the historical relations between ideology and children’s literature as “emotive” (18). Hunt further argues that “As a result [of this emotiveness], work in this area has tended to be polemical or to address specific issues such as censorship or covert racialism” (18). Hunt assigns responsibility for these polemical approaches to Bob Dixon and Robert Leeson, both of whom happen to be Leftist critics of children’s literature. Confidently dismissing...