Children’s literature
1. Introduction
Definitions, themes, changes, attitudes
Common themes and blurred genres
2. Internationalism, the universal child and the world of children’s literature
Universal childhood: a Romantic model
Universal children’s literature: semiotic models
International understanding through children’s books
The ideology of internationalism
How international is international children’s literature?
’World literature’ - international classics
PART I. Theory and critical approaches
3. Theorising and theories
The conditions of possibility of children’s literature
Competing critical histories and the status of the child
The doubleness of discourse: constructed/constructive
Origins and the genealogy of children’s literature
4. Criticism and the critical mainstream
5. Critical tradition and ideological positioning
Representation: gender, minority groups and bias: the debate from the 1970s until the present day
The development of criticism of children’s fiction: the Leavisite paradigm
The ideological debate in literary studies
The construction of the reader
Implied readers and real readers
Ideology and children’s fiction
8. Reader-response criticism
A shift of critical perspective
9. Psychoanalytical criticism
Ego psychology and object relations theories
Jacques Lacan: the return to Freud through language
Psychoanalytic theory and the feminist critique
10. Feminism revisited
11. Picture books and illustration
12. Narrative theory and children’s literature
Plot-oriented and character-oriented narratives
Characterisation as a narrative issue
13. Intertextuality and the child reader
14. Comparative children’s literature
Development of comparative children’s literature
Areas of comparative children’s literature studies
Contact and transfer studies: Alice in Germany
PART II. Forms and genres
16. Ancient and medieval children’s texts
17. Texts in English used by children, 1550-1800
Origins: from Caxton to Puritanism
Publishing for children: the early eighteenth century
Educational theorists and children’s books
19. Fairy tales and folk tales
Tal es about fairies, and fairy tales
20. Playground rhymes and the oral tradition
21. Children’s rhymes and folklore
Contemporary and comparative approaches
The classification of children’s folklore
Recent trends in the study of children’s folklore
The contribution of technology
The comparative study of children’s rhymes and folklore
Do children’s rhymes reveal universal metrical patterns?
Future directions in the study of children’s folklore
22. Catechistical, devotional and biblical writing
Catechisms and Bibles before 1900
Devotional literature before 1900
23. Contemporary religious writing
Theist religiosity in children’s literature
24. The development of illustrated texts and picture books
25. The picture book
1900-39: the emergence of the picture book
1940-50: war and the immediate post-war period
1960-79: a period of change - the modern picture book emerges
The origins of the postmodern picture book
The characteristics of contemporary postmodern picture books
26. Shaping boyhood
British Empire builders and adventurers
Origins of the adventure story
New developments - the twentieth century
27. Childhood, didacticism and the gendering of British children’s literature
28. Popular literature
Comics, dime novels, pulps and Penny Dreadfuls
British children’s comics: 150 years of fun and thrills
American comics and comic books
Dime novels, pulps and Penny Dreadfuls
30. Poetry
‘Country rhimes’ and ‘fingle-fangles’: what is poetry for children?
The history of children’s poetry
Out of the garden into the street: contemporary poetry
Poetry for children internationally
31. Animal stories
The uses of animals in fiction for adults and children
33. Domestic fantasy
Real gardens with imaginary toads
39. Horror
41. Series fiction
42. Teenage fiction
Realism, romances, contemporary problem novels
44. Writers for adults, writers for children
45. Metafictions and experimental work
Postmodernism, metafiction and experimental picture books
Metafictive and experimental narrative techniques
47. Story-telling
48. Children’s information texts