ENM4210

Writing the child

Heather Scutter

12 points 2 hours per week Second semester Clayton

Objectives On the successful completion of this subject students should have gained a familiarity with a range of historical constructions of fictional children, an understanding of the cultural constructedness of the child reader and of childhood, and a grasp of the relevant theoretical approaches, especially of discourse analysis.

Synopsis This subject will examine historical and cultural changes in the representation of childhood and the child figure in a range of texts from the romantic to the modern eras. Prose fictions, some addressed to adult readers, some to child readers, will be explored for the ways in which discourses about the 'child' intersect with discourses about notions of origins; gender and sexuality; class, social place, power and subjectivity; race, especially in the relationship between empire and colonised; the family and the home; education of mind and body; and growing up, especially with regard to the liberal humanist preoccupation with individual attainment of maturity/adulthood through suffering. The subject will employ poststructuralist, semiotic and discourse theory, and will have a feminist emphasis.

Assessment Two seminar papers (2000 words): 20% each Short essay (2000 words): 20% Long essay (3000 words): 40%

Prescribed texts

A set of readings from Locke, Rousseau, Blake, Wordsworth, Lamb, Mayhew and Hans Christian Andersen will be available from the English department.
Barrie J M Peter Pan Puffin
Burnett F H The secret garden Puffin
Carroll L Alice's adventures in Wonderland Puffin
Dickens C Little Dorrit OUP
Eliot G Silas Marner Penguin
Golding W Lord of the flies Faber
Hughes R A high wind in Jamaica Penguin
James H The turn of the screw Penguin
Kipling R Kim Penguin
MacDonald G At the back of the north wind Puffin
Norton M The borrowers Puffin
Ransome A Swallows and Amazons Puffin
Stead C The man who loved children Angus and Robertson
Storr C Marianne dreams Puffin

Recommended texts

Aries P Centuries of childhood Cape
Carpenter H Secret gardens Houghton Mifflin
Coveney P The image of childhood Penguin
Rose J The case of Peter Pan or the impossibility of children's fiction Macmillan
Stephens J Language and ideology in children's fiction Longman

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