Introduction to Children s Literature

Transcription

1 Introduction to Children s Literature Course Code: ENG 533 Course Convener: Dr Frosoulla Kofterou. Lecture/Seminars: Monday and Thursday 9:00-10:30 Location: ΧΩΔ02, room 016. Tutorials: 11:30 12:30 Monday and Thursday. Contact Details: f.kofterou@gmail.com Course Outline: What is children s literature and who is it for? This course is aimed at introducing students to the expansive and flourishing field of children s literature whilst exploring its diachronic evolution from the oral tradition through to pivotal texts such as The Swiss Family Robinson, Tom Brown s Schooldays, Alice s Adventures in Wonderland, Lord of the Flies, Forever, Harry Potter and the Noughts and Crosses series. Students will be encouraged to develop their critical thinking by exploring the relationship between texts and their epistemological, as well as sociocultural contexts, as a means of challenging mainstream assumptions about children and childhood. Understanding how these changes developed into popular narrative trends, such as didacticism, adventure and fantasy fiction, the school story, young adult fiction and the crossover phenomenon will be an essential learning outcome. Students will also have the 1

2 opportunity to engage with the burgeoning field of picture books in their various educational, wordless, postmodern and multimodal forms. While focussing on wellknown twentieth and twenty-first-century works, we will investigate the complex relationship between text and image, through a range of critical approaches drawing on narratology, psychoanalysis, semiotics and gender studies. Course Aims and Learning Outcomes: v Develop a diachronic understanding of the key theoretical approaches to the field of children s literature, and map significant changes in this chronology. v Develop a diachronic understanding of the epistemological and socio-cultural contexts that influenced trends in writing for or about children. v Develop a critical approach to reading, through close textual analysis. v Demonstrate the ability to identify and question commonplace assumptions about children s literature and the child. v Analyse how such assumptions are constructed and disseminated within culture, while subjecting your own thinking to the same critical scrutiny. v Demonstrate the ability to discuss categories of children s literature within a comparative context and identify their distinct literary characteristics. v Incorporate subject-specific terminology when debating and communicating ideas within seminars and while writing assignments. Lecture and Seminar Program: Week One: Introduction. This introductory lecture and seminar will outline the key debates and ideas concerning the field of children s literature such as origins, classification, and theoretical approaches, which we will examine further in the forthcoming weeks. Course material will be provided. Week Two: Fairy tales, didacticism and evangelical moralism. Extracts from Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm s Children s and Household Tales (1812), Sarah Fielding s The Governess; or The Little Female Academy (1749) and Mary 2

3 Martha Sherwood s The History of the Fairchild Family (1818). Course material will be provided. Week Three: Enlightenment pedagogy and the castaway child. John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693): course material will be provided. Jean-Jacques, Rousseau Emile (1763): course material will be provided. Johann Wyss, The Swiss Family Robinson. (1816). Week Four: Empire and adventure fiction. Robert Ballantyne, The Coral Island (1857). Week Five: The Post-Darwinian child. Charles Kingsley, The Water Babies (1863). Lewis Carroll, Alice s Adventures in Wonderland (1864). Week Six: The school story. Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown s Schooldays (1857). Rudyard Kipling, Stalky and Co (1899). Week Seven Presentations on J.M Barrie s Peter and Wendy (1911). You will be divided into groups and asked to present your views on this text. Week Eight: Animal stories: anthropomorphism and talking animals. Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows (1908). A.A Milne, The House at Pooh Corner (1928). Week Nine: Post-WWII Children s literature. William Golding, Lord of the Flies (1954). Week Ten: Sex, Gender and Identity. Judy Blume, Forever (1975). Julie Anne Peters, Luna (2004). 3

4 Week Eleven: Series fiction and the crossover phenomenon. J.K Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher s Stone (1997). Week Twelve - YA fiction. Malorie Blackman, Noughts & crosses: Book One (2001). Tanya Landman, Buffalo Soldier (2014). Week Thirteen - Picture Books: The relationship between text and image. Janet and Allan Ahlberg, The Jolly Postman (1986). Lauren Child, Who s Afraid of the Big Bad Book? (2002). Emily Gravett, Wolves (2005). Method of Assessment: Two Essays 40% each. Presentation 20%. Recommended Further Reading: Alston, Ann. The Family in English Children s Literature. London: Routledge, Ariés, Philippe. Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life Trans. Robert Baldick. New York: Vintage, Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas, Beckett, Sandra L. Crossover Fiction: Global and Historical Perspectives. London: Routledge, Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. London: Penguin, Booth, Wayne C. The Rhetoric of Fiction. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

5 Bristow, Joseph. Empire Boys: Adventures in a Man s World. London: Harper Collins Academic, Butler, Catherine and Reynolds, Kimberly. Modern Children s Literature: An Introduction. London: Palgrave Macmillan, Coats. Karen. Looking Glasses and Neverlands: Lacan, Desire, and Subjectivity in Children s Literature. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, Darwin, Charles. On The Origins of Species. Ed. Gillian Beer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Defoe, Daniel, The Life and Surprising Strange Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Falconer, Rachel. The Crossover Novel: Contemporary Children's Fiction and its Adult Readership. London: Routledge, Felman, Shoshana, and Dori Laub, eds. Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History. New York: Routledge, Green, Martin. The Robinson Crusoe Story. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, Grenby, M.O. Children s Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, Hourihan, Margery. Deconstructing the Hero: Literary Theory and Children s Literature. London: Routledge, Kristeva, Julia, and Leon S. Roudiez. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press, Lacan, Jacques, Héloïse Fink, and Bruce Fink. Ecrits: The First Complete Edition in English. New York: W.W. Norton, Lesnik-Oberstein Karin, ed. Children s Literature: New Approaches. London: Palgrave Macmillan, McCallum, Robyn. Ideologies of Identity in Adolescent Fiction: The Dialogic Construction of Subjectivity. New York: Garland Pub Nelson, Claudia. Boys Will Be Girls: The Feminine Ethic and British Children s Fiction, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press,

6 Nikolajeva, Maria. Aesthetic Approaches to Children's Literature: An Introduction. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, Paul, Lisa. Reading Otherways. Gloucestershire: The Thimble Press, Rose, Jacqueline. The Case of Peter Pan, or, The Impossibility of Children s Fiction. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, Ed. Rudd, David. The Routledge Companion to Children's Literature. London: Routledge, Rudd, David. Reading the Child in Children s Literature: An Heretical Approach. Basingstoke: Macmillan, Sigmund, Freud. Beyond the Pleasure Principle, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud: Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Group Psychology and Other Works, Volume XV111 ( ), ed. and trans. James Strachey. London: Vintage, Trites, Roberta Seelinger. Disturbing the Universe: Power and Repression in Adolescent Literature. Iowa: University of Iowa Press, Wall, Barbara. The Narrator's Voice: The Dilemma of Children's Fiction. London: Macmillan, Academic Journals. Children's Literature Association Quarterly. Children's Literature in Education. International Research in Children's Literature. The Lion and the Unicorn. Jeunesse: Young People, Text and Culture. Plagiarism: Plagiarism will not be tolerated: you will receive a zero for the plagiarized assignment and be referred to the departmental board for further discussion of your case. 6