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Class Notes Children's Literature
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Class Notes Children's Literature (Both 19th and 20th Century)
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Week 1 29/09/2021 N-Art - 077The radical nature of children’s literature —> the 19th and 20th century are the golden age for
children’s literature.
Assessment
- Midterm 1250-word essay / analysis (19th century) 40% —> Thursday November 4th 5pm
- End of term 2-hour exam (20th century) 60% —> December 2021, date to be con rmed
Connections between Children’s Literatures
- All the writers are standing o the shoulders of other writers. You can compare the three
musketeers with d’artagnan to Ron, Hermione and Harry, or you can see the lion the witch
and the wardrobe as a template for the Hogwarts houses.
- The Three Musketeers connects to Little Women as The Three Musketeers shows
brotherhood and Little Women shows sisterhood.
- Andersen wrote more original stories, whereas Grimm took more stories from already existing
folklore. Andersen did this too but less than Grimm.
- Snow white —> it was originally the mother who did all these horrible things, but that
was too much for the audience so they had to remove that element. They did this by
making it the step mother, and the evil stepmother is now a often used trope in fairy
tales.
- Asland - religious connection, but you can also see a connection between Asland and
Dumbledore.
History of Children’s literature
- Victorian idea —> the idea of idealising the child and elongating childhood.
- Children’s literature can elongate childhood, this was a common need in the victorian
era.
- Almost fetishising the child —> You can see this in Alice in Wonderland or Dorothy in
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
- You see epiphanies all throughout literature but it is especially prevalent in children’s
literature
- It became a solid genre even though you have fairy tales, allegorical tales, adventure stories
etc.
- Wilde thought that writing children’s literature had made him a better man.
- Wilde is the king of allegory
- The happy prince is Wilde’s way of attacking the materialism of society, nd a little
more soul.
- Dorothy is a girl protagonist like Alice, but they are di erent in a lot of ways.
- Talking animals are a reoccurring theme in children’s literature, but this is a remnant of
medieval literature. Mythology also reoccurs frequently.
- Art can be an important interpretation of the tale, Tove Jansson drew and wrote everything
herself.
- Roald Dahl grew up as Norwegian and Welsh, he felt caught between two cultures and this is
something that translates into the tales.
- Children’s literature give you a sense of agency, you relate to things even if you have a
di erent journey, there’s something to relate to for everyone.
- In the 20th century you have 2 world wars burning in the background, even in Finn Family
Moomintroll there’s an angst about a nuclear war possibly happening.
- Children’s literature acknowledges anxiety, all these authors have had a major tragedy in their
lives, they’ve all lived through trauma and they use that in their works.
- Barrie’s brother died and he used to dress up in his brother’s clothes to comfort his
mother, and that’s how Peter Pan was created.
- The sadness in these tales is in a sense
- Tove Jansson
- Tove was a brilliant cartoonist and sculptor
- She was a sculptor and painter.
- Tove Jansson is the most philosophical of all
- The moomins themselves are pleasing to look at.
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, - She’s brilliant at putting radical ideas at less obvious spaces.
- She loves the idea of otherness.
- The term fantasy as we know now hadn’t been coined as much.
- Moomin valley is a fantastical place, Tove makes the fantasy a reality.
- The fantasy places have the same set of problems as the real world has.
- Tolkien hated allegory but he loved history. “I want you to believe in this history wether it is
real or not”
- The Lion the witch and the wardrobe is a pilgrimage and it shows children ful lling a
prophecy.
- In the 19th century people. read a lot of novels, and in the 20th century books became
serialised as that was how people were reading it —> the lion the witch and the wardrobe is
a good example of this.
- Harper lee is a southern writer, it is set in the 1930s but it is about the 1960s.
- It’s heavy subject matter but it deals with important issues.
- Judy Blume is relatable to everyone, she related to teenagers so well as well as to the idea of
living between cultures.
- Margaret is like “I need a religion”
- Matilda and Harry Potter is about negligent parents.
Week 2 06/10/2021 N-Art - 070
Overview of Children’s Literature
- Children’s literature is so brilliant but it’s often disregarded because it’s “written for children.”
- What do we mean by Children’s literature? Novels, poetry, non- ction, comic books…
- Historical evolution - origins in songs / stories, and an oral tradition, stories tended towards a
more didactic. Moralistic nature, about how children should behave.
- The Brother’s Grimm picked up where the source material left o .
- Grimm frightens children into good behaviour, Andersen doesn’t do that.
- John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)– “If we will attentively
consider new born children, we shall have little reason to think that they bring many ideas
into the world with them”, putting forward the idea of Tabula Rasa. Locke rst seems to have
advocated targeting children as a special audience in Some Thoughts on Education (1693).
He wrote that Aesops fables were, “apt to delight and entertain a child. . . yet a ord useful
re ection to a grown man….”
- Idea of not talking down to a child
- The modern children’s book emerged in mid-18th century England; A Little Pretty Pocket-
Book by John Newbery, widely considered as the rst modern children’s book, published in
1744, it contained rhymes, picture stories, and games for pleasure rather than instruction.
Newbery’s idea was that play was a better enticement to children’s good behaviour, rather
than physical discipline. (Newbery was also very canny and became a successful publisher,
publishing many children’s books, as well as work by Samuel Johnson, among others.)
- A little pretty pocket book is the rst modern children’s book,
- Playing is a better way for children to learn, than simply giving them instructions is.
- Jean-Jaques Rousseau - argued
- Took up the mantle from Locke and ran with that idea
- The 19th century and 20th centuries are routinely seen as harnessing “the Golden Age” of
children’s literature, since so many works now regarded as classics came out of this period.
- Elitism within children’s literature
- Comics were not folded in.
- Seth Lerer’s Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter – his book is
a ”history of reception”, presenting a history about what children have heard and read, and is
a touchstone for the course.
- The International Companion Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature notes that
- Harry Potter took the world by surprise. Librarians helped Harry Potter become
successful as they recommended the book to children.
- Think of Aesop Fables, written by Aesop, who live between 620 and 564 BC. Originally they
were addressed to adults when rst written, and were heavily political, but from the
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, Renaissance era they were used for the education of children - the rst printed version in
English was by William Caxton in 1484.
- Moral instruction was used as a way to educate young children
Fairy Tales
- What do we mean by the term fairy-tales?
- Usually a short story, which typically features folkloric fantasy characters; trolls, witches,
fairies, dragons, talking animals, with elements of magic or a kind of enchantment
- What makes fairy tales di erent from fold narratives such as legends?
- Legends often involve a belief in the events described, particularly moral tales.
- Fairy tales is most often related to stories with their origins in the European tradition and
to children’s literature
- Think of how the term is often applied in modern contexts – a ”fairy tale” ending denotes
happiness, but as we know, many fairy tales end in sadness, or confusion, rather than a neat,
and pleasing conclusion – Bros. Grimm and Andersen are great examples of this
- The term fairy tales often note happiness in the modern world, while that is often not the
case in the actual fairy tales.
- The term ‘fairy tale’, or ‘contes de fées’ came from Madame d’Aulnoy, a writer, and a French
countess, known for her fairy tales in the late 17th century.
- Tales originally for an adult audience, later sanitised for children”
- She wrote her stories in a chatty kind of a style, to accommodate how many of the stories
were told in salons. Much of her writing featured a world of animal brides and grooms,
where love was eventually reached once great obstacles were overcome, they were not so
suitable for children, and were sanitised in later versions. You could reference Shakespeare
here and something like Midsummer Night’s Dream, ri ng on fairytales and the actual fairy
world, and the theme of transformation.
- They di er from Brothers Grimm, for example, who came over 135 years later, in their style,
but are similar in their sense of adult themes that were often not actually suitable to the
audience they suggested they were for.
- Again, think about the roots in the oral tradition, and a folk element within. The ultimate
origins of fairy tales can be quite di cult to ascertain, since only the literary versions exist,
most are handed down, reshaped, through the oral tradition, in each country, but research
suggests that some of these stories can be traced back thousands of years, even to the
Bronze Age.
- Within folklore, fairy tales are often classi ed quite di erently, the term that is often preferred
is ”Marchen” – the German for ”wonder tale”, and a fairy tale with an unhappy ending is
called an ‘anti-fairy tale’. Another interesting point, when we think about “once upon a time”,
the opener which references things long ago, one lesser known German approach was "In
the old times when wishing was still e ective"
- Fairy tale with an unhappy ending is an ‘anti-fairy tales’
- Once upon a time —> takes you back to a time where wishing was still e ective.
- It is still in dispute what actually makes a fairy tale; some suggest it should involve a quest,
fairies, talking animals, enchantment, but some stories don’t involve any of these things,
some think it’s about magic, some about transformation. Look at Tolkien’s essay ‘On Fairy
Stories’ for more on this, his own assertions are very interesting, he suggests that “A “fairy-
story” is one which touches on or uses Faerie, whatever its own main purpose may be:
satire, adventure, morality, fantasy. Faerie itself may perhaps most nearly be translated by
Magic — but it is magic of a peculiar mood and power, at the furthest pole from the vulgar
devices of the laborious, scienti c, magician. There is one proviso: if there is any satire
present in the tale, one thing must not be made fun of, the magic itself. That must in that
story be taken seriously, neither laughed at nor explained away.”
- Tolkien thought you should believe what you read, you should believe that what you’re
reading is reality.
- Tolkien goes on – “It is usually assumed that children are the natural or the especially
appropriate audience for fairy-stories. In describing a fairy-story which they think adults
might possibly read for their own entertainment, reviewers frequently indulge in such
waggeries as: “this book is for children from the ages of six to sixty.” But I have never yet
seen the pu of a new motor-model that began thus: “this toy will amuse infants from
seventeen to seventy”; though that to my mind would be much more appropriate. Is there
any essential connection between children and fairy-stories? Is there any call for comment, if
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, an adult reads them for himself? Reads them as tales, that is, not studies them as curios.
Adults are allowed to collect and study anything, even old theatre programmes or paper
bags.”
- And let us not forget – before the de nition of ‘fantasy’, stories such as Tolkien’s The Hobbit
(an early illustration to the right) and Baum’s Wizard of Oz, Orwell’s Animal Farm were
classi ed as ‘fairy tales’ – they are world-building novels.
- Terms always kept getting reshaped, fantasy is the art of the impossible, science-
ction is the art of the possible.
The Juniper Tree ( lm with Björk)
- 1990
- Black and white
- Cinematic experience
- The juniper tree was evocative as a tale
The Brother’s Grimm
- Jacob Grimm 1785-1863
- Wilhem 1786-1859
- Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, German academics, philologists, cultural researchers, writers,
lexicographers, collectors, published folklore during 19th century. Biographical turning point
perhaps includes their father’s death, which plunged them into poverty, and a ected the
course of their lives.
- Children’s and Household Tales, published in 1812, came about with a rise of Romanticism, a
revived interest in traditional folk stories, which to the brothers represented a pure form of
national literature and culture, a cultural nationalism, we can see connections here with the
Gaelic Revival. Between 1812 – 1857 their rst collection was revised and republished many
times, from 86 stories to 200.
- Their inspiration came from folk tales, they went all around Germany to collect these
stories.
- They tried to preserve the features of the original tales.
- They reworked them to t the literary form.
- Brothers Grimm were among the rst to try to preserve the features of the oral tales, yet they
reworked them to t the literary form.
- They also were working on a de nitive German dictionary, which they never nished, but
ended on the word ‘frucht’ – fruit. Symbolic.
- First volume was criticised as not suitable for children, so they removed sexual references,
such as Rapunzel wondering why her dress was tight around her tummy (naively revealing
she was pregnant) and they made changes such as the wicked mother in the rst edition of
Snow White, and Hansel and Grethel, who became a wicked stepmother, however, often
violence was increased.
- A lot of sexual jokes weren’t appropriate, but they increased the violence in the tales
upon reworking the tales.
- There was a medieval kind of violence, that can be derived from the original tales.
- In uence of the brothers is huge – still resonates, W.H. Auden praised them as a foundation
stone for western culture, however, their work was sometimes used for sinister purposes – in
the 30s and 40s, the Third Reich appropriated the Brothers work, and encouraged all
German households to have a copy in their house. Misunderstood by the Allied Forces, the
book was banned in Allied-occupied Germany for a time, yet interestingly became one of the
foundation stones for Walt Disney of course, so synonymous now with America – and Disney,
in 1937 released Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, this battle of good over evil, was
repeated by Disney in1959 (amid the Cold War) with Sleeping Beauty. Also, think about
Cinderella, and how that tale gets recycled over and over again, with Pretty Woman,
Enchanted, The Princess Diaries, Ever After….
- Foundation stone for western culture (same goes for Andersen)
- The Third Reich mandated everyone to have a copy of Children’s and Household tales
as it was seen as a foundation for being good germans. The allied countries
misunderstood the works of the Brother’s Grimm, and forbade people to have a copy of
the Children’s and Household tales.
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