In this Book
- Literature and the Child: Romantic Continuations, Postmodern Contestations
- Book
- 1998
- Published by: University of Iowa Press
summary
The Romantic myth of childhood as a transhistorical holy time of innocence and spirituality, uncorrupted by the adult world, has been subjected in recent years to increasingly serious interrogation. Was there ever really a time when mythic ideals were simple, pure, and uncomplicated? The contributors to this book contend—although in widely differing ways and not always approvingly—that our culture is indeed still pervaded, in this postmodern moment of the very late twentieth century, by the Romantic conception of childhood which first emerged two hundred years ago.
In the wake of the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, western Europe experienced another fin de siècle characterized by overwhelming material and institutional change and instability. By historicizing the specific political, social, and economic conflicts at work within the notion of Romantic childhood, the essayists in Literature and the Child show us how little these forces have changed over time and how enriching and empowering they can still be for children and their parents.
In the first section, “Romanticism Continued and Contested,” Alan Richardson and Mitzi Myers question the origins and ends of Romantic childhood. In “Romantic Ironies, Postmodern Texts,” Dieter Petzold, Richard Flynn, and James McGavran argue that postmodern texts for both children and adults perpetuate the Romantic complexities of childhood. Next, in “The Commerce of Children's Books,” Anne Lundin and Paula Connolly study the production and marketing of children's classics. Finally, in “Romantic Ideas in Cultural Confrontations,” William Scheick and Teya Rosenberg investigate interactions of Romantic myths with those of other cultural systems.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- PART ONE ROMANTICISM CONTINUING AND CONTESTED
- Romanticism and the End of Childhood
- pp. 23-43
- PART TWO ROMANTIC IRONIES, POSTMODERN TEXTS
- PART THREE ROMANTICISM AND THE COMMERCE OF CHILDREN’S BOOKS
- PART FOUR
- Notes on Contributors
- pp. 257-258
Additional Information
ISBN
9781587292910
Related ISBN(s)
9780877456902, 9781587299971
DOI
MARC Record
OCLC
50320981
Pages
280
Launched on MUSE
2012-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No
Copyright
1999