MONASH UNIVERSITY FACULTY HANDBOOKS

Arts Undergraduate Handbook 1996

Authorised by Academic Registrar, April 1996

ENH4210

Writing the child

Proposed to be offered next in 1997

H Scutter

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) or examination (3 hours): 40%

Prescribed texts

• 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