This study argues that early writings for children reflect by their very nature a radical social redirection, since the valuation of children and the state of childhood was the result of cultural upheavals in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries which led to the development of a powerful, literate and progressive working class: industrialization, educational reform, Puritanism, evangelicalism, a growing feminist movement and the socioeconomic struggle against poverty and repression. Children's literature was a means for ambitious and reform-minded outsiders--those excluded by class, economics, gender, and religious, political or sexual preferences--to communicate both subversive and optimistic values to succeeding generations who embody society's hopes for the future. / Chapter One reviews social background leading to the formal development of a body of reformative literature written expressly for children in the late eighteenth century, focusing in particular on the influence of subversive Puritan writings, such as those by Nathaniel Crouch and John Bunyan, and the political and economic empowerment of the working classes. Chapter Two examines the subversive nature of early imaginative writing for children, including works by John Newbery and Samuel Johnson's "The Fountains." Chapter Three discusses early writings for children by professional women writers. Works by Anna Barbauld, Mary Wollstonecraft and Sarah Trimmer are discussed as early examples of a radical reassessment of the significance of three groups of "little people": children, women and the working poor. Chapter Four examines the subversive effects of nineteenth-century works of fairy tale and fantasy such as Catherine Sinclair's Holiday House and John Ruskin's "The King of the Golden River." Chapter Five addresses the usurpation of children's literature as political and social satire by writers like Christina Rossetti and Oscar Wilde, concluding that cultural pessimism and skepticism led to a reactionary conservatism in children's literature at the end of the nineteenth century. Works such as J. M. Barrie's Peter and Wendy address a static and nostalgic childhood of adult memory rather than the dynamic spiritual and intellectual growth of real childhood. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 53-03, Section: A, page: 0822. / Major Professor: Bertram Davis. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1992.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_76610 |
| Contributors | Sigler, Carolyn., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 182 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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