Children's Literature

Pat Pinsent

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781137335463
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350308930
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This invaluable Guide surveys the key critical works and debates in the vibrant field of children's literature since its inception. Leading expert Pat Pinsent combines a chronological overview of developments in the genre with analysis of key theorists and theories, and subject-specific methodologies.

PART I

Readers

CHAPTER ONE

Beginnings

Introduction

It is unsurprising that children’s literature study as an academic discipline was not taken seriously at university level until quite late in the twentieth century. The discipline of English literature itself had for many years been regarded as something that any educated person (man?) would pick up incidentally; traditionally only Greek and Latin were seen as subjects that demanded serious study. As a result, academic scholarship was fairly slow in interrogating even the classics of children’s literature; there was a relatively small market for books which regarded children’s literature as more than an adjunct to literature written for adults.

Children’s literature really only began to be regarded as a ‘respectable’ academic discipline from the 1970s onwards. A natural consequence of the opportunity to take it as part of a degree course (even though this was often initially only available to students preparing for teaching) was the emergence of a demand for criticism which took this body of material as a central concern, rather than seeing it merely as an offshoot of general literature. Much of this criticism, again unsurprisingly, focused on the classroom, both in terms of assisting teachers in their choice and presentation of books, and in looking at the responses of their pupils to these books. Nevertheless, the currently impressive body of critical work had most of its origins in this period, though the historical contextualisation of literature for children had preceded it by many years.

In this chapter, attention will be paid both to the development of increasingly specialised historio-critical writing and the beginnings of the varied range of critical approaches to children’s literature which have developed over the years. In general, the focus will be on writing before about 1990, by which date criticism of children’s literature was well on the way towards being a ‘respectable’ area of academic study.

Nostalgia

Many of the early writers on children’s literature took as their starting point the books which they themselves had loved as children. The results of this are twofold: firstly, there is in these volumes an inevitable lack of discussion of contemporary literature; and secondly, their approach, being coloured by childhood memories, is unavoidably tinged with more subjectivity than is normal in academic studies. Such studies also tend to rely heavily on a biographical approach towards the authors concerned, rather than literary criticism proper.

One of the most popular writers in this area during the middle part of the twentieth century was Roger Lancelyn Green. As an author, he produced children’s versions of Greek myths and the legends about King Arthur and Robin Hood; his own fiction for children was also largely based on these classic sources. Additionally he wrote biographies of Lewis Carroll and J.M. Barrie, and of C.S. Lewis, his own mentor at Oxford University.

Although by no means the earliest venture into writing about children’s literature, Green’s compilation, Tellers of Tales (1946), which provides relatively brief accounts of a wide range of children’s authors, is paradigmatic of the attitude taken by many writers about children’s literature in the early years. Ostensibly addressing a child readership (he explicitly states that the book is not meant for the scholar (p.246)), Green suggests that, like himself as a boy, young readers may want to know more about the authors of the books they enjoy. Nevertheless, his book also provides useful information about these authors for adult readers, including students of the subject, supplying as it does ‘Bibli-ographical Notes’; these comprise a list of works, with dates, by the authors discussed, together with a rather subjective selection of ‘authorities’. Green’s guiding principle when choosing whom to write about is that these are the ‘most important’ British writers for young people during the previous one hundred years; he does not, however, give any indication of his criteria for deciding which authors fit this descriptor. Only one of them, A.A. Milne, was alive at the date of publication, though Green does find an excuse to mention in his introduction his other living favourites: Arthur Ransome, whom he ranks as ‘little lower than the angels’ (p.16), and two authors he describes as ‘lesser known’: J.R.R. Tolkien and the now forgotten Geoffrey Mure. By its nature, this is clearly not an academic work, yet it epitomises an approach to children’s literature which was all-pervasive at the time – writers are ranked, and discussion of their work is characterised in Green’s case by adjectives such as ‘delicious’ (p.21), ‘glorious’ (p.62) and ‘wonderful’ (p.219). Inevitable in a book by a storyteller are the many anecdotes which enliven the accounts of the various authors.

The liberal humanist approach

Many of the critical approaches now prevalent in children’s literature, as indeed in literary studies as a whole, have been of relatively recent inception. Though literary criticism in English prior to the twentieth century features such great names as John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson and Matthew Arnold, it often appears to have been somewhat incidental to a writer’s main literary output, and seldom involves close textual analysis. Not until the first third of the twentieth century, with the endeavours of critics such as I.A. Richards, F.R. Leavis, L.C. Knights, G. Wilson Knight and T.S. Eliot, do we see the replacement of an emphasis on biographical information about authors, together with musings on extra-textual issues,¹ by a presentation of theoretical perspectives on literature, from a liberal humanist perspective, based on close reading of the texts. Richards, whose Practical Criticism: A Study of Literary Judgment (1929) exposes the often bizarre misreadings made by readers deprived of information about the authors of poems presented to them, was influential in causing generations of university lecturers to insist that their students prioritise close reading of texts over knowledge about the lives of the authors concerned.

Many of the early writers who took writing for and about children seriously had either been taught by F.R. Leavis himself or had imbibed his principles during their own university studies, from lecturers who were themselves strongly influenced by his liberal humanist approach. Notoriously, The Great Tradition, first published in 1948 (though Leavis’ influence on generations of English scholars preceded its publication by many years), begins, ‘The great English novelists are Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry James and Joseph Conrad – to stop at that comparatively safe point in history’ (1993: 9), a clear indication of his provocatively evaluative approach.

A notable instance of this Leavisite inheritance is Peter Coveney’s study of the literary portrayal of childhood throughout the ages, first published in 1957 as Poor Monkey, with a revised edition appearing in 1967 under the title The Image of Childhood. This second edition carries an introduction by F.R. Leavis himself, who takes the opportunity to expound his own views about the significance of childhood in literature. Although he is not talking about children’s literature per se, he inevitably alludes to writers such as Blake, Wordsworth, Dickens and Twain whose work figures (sometimes on the periphery) in the syllabuses of studies in children’s literature. This introduction affords Leavis the opportunity to present his elevated moral understanding of the function of literature: he argues that the child can in some texts, even those by the same author, be ‘now a symbol of growth and development, and now a symbol of retreat into personal regression and self-pity’ (p.32).

Thus he distinguishes between writers who ‘went to the child to express their involvement with life, and those who retreated towards the symbol from “life’s decay”‘. He concludes, ‘It is perhaps not remarkable that through writing of childhood there should be those who wanted to go back to the beginning to begin again, and others who wanted just to go back’ (p.35).

This explicit moral perspective underlies much of the early writing about children’s literature, and could also be seen to reflect a polarity between critics who seek to present literature from the past as a foundation for the future, and those, like Green, who just want to look back to what they themselves enjoyed as children. Coveney’s own adherence to the principles of his mentor is made explicit in his ‘Epilogue’ where he expresses the hope that his book ‘will at least have suggested some of the criteria upon which the immense proliferation of literature concerned with children in more recent times may be assessed’ (p.337).

Following in the wake of the criticism of Leavis and Richards, early writing on children’s literature tended to employ a book-centred approach, to abjure an overly biographical emphasis, and to evidence a desire to establish in children’s literature an analogue of the Leavisite ‘great tradition’.² A notable instance of this characteristic is the work of Fred Inglis (The Promise of Happiness: Values and Meaning in Children’s Fiction, 1981), the first chapter of which, entitled ‘The Terms of Reference’, begins with words intentionally echoing Leavis: ‘The great children’s novelists are Lewis Carroll, Rudyard Kipling, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Arthur Ransome, William Mayne, and Philippa Pearce – to stop for a moment at that comparatively safe point on an uncertain list’

(p.3). This tribute makes evident Inglis’s desire to emulate the master by apparently attempting to set up, from the classics of the past, a standard by which later children’s authors could be judged. The moral basis of this endeavour is indicated when he goes on to ask ‘who would not want his or her child to read the best books … we try to say what some of the best books are like, so that we can hand them on to our sons and daughters’ (p.3).

Inglis continues to reveal his Leavisite standpoint as he presents his arguments: firstly ‘that true judgments as to values are possible; secondly to try to show that the best prose is itself evidence of human goodness and a way of learning how to be virtuous; thirdly to suggest how the intrinsically human habit of fiction-making is essential to the making and maintaining of identity’ (p.4). He claims that ‘the best children’s books awaken our innocence’ (p.8) and that ‘To study what is excellent helps towards excellence’ (p.15).³

The titles of some of the chapters which follow reveal how Inglis attempts to fulfil his aims; in particular, Chapter Four, ‘The lesser great tradition’, which is summarised as ‘A critical study of the best of

Victorian and Edwardian children’s novels – Alice, girlhood and Oxford – Beatrix Potter and Victoriana – The Secret Garden and Romanticism – The Railway Children and political economy – The Wind in the Willows, home and friendship’ (p.viii) could be said to encapsulate many of his aims. His final chapter, ‘Resolution and independence’, puts forward Dickens as ‘the model to set before children’s novelists’ (p.ix).⁴

More space has been devoted to Inglis than perhaps he deserves, especially within the context of the way in which the criticism of children’s literature was soon to develop. The justification for this is that he epitomises an approach which was for a long while normative in literary criticism generally but has now come to seem outdated – an approach which Leavis, and in turn Coveney and Inglis, could be said to inherit from Matthew Arnold. Its tendency to equate good writing with good living may seem naïve today but provided an important part of the rationale for literature teaching in the earlier part of the twentieth century. It also appears that approaches such as Green’s have an implicit assumption that ‘good’ children’s literature leaves the reader with a positive view of human nature, and, if not precisely a happy ending, a sense of hope for the future – an assumption that could be said to underlie much early writing on the subject, perhaps particularly if it had a pedagogical emphasis.⁵

Green’s work was followed shortly afterwards by an equally personal response to children’s literature from the distinguished children’s author, Geoffrey Trease. In his Tales Out of School (1949), his progressive engagement with political ideology is as evident as it is in his own fiction. He asserted that ‘children’s enjoyment was not the sole or even the main criterion of a good children’s book’, and that because children are likely to be influenced by what they read, their mentors should both insist that they read the best and steer them away from the worst.⁶ By 1964, when he came to update his work, he felt that his strictures on the limitations of the class-bound perspective of many children’s authors of his time had borne fruit.⁷

Historical approaches

The main critical approaches to...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I: Readers
• Part II: Genres
• Part III: TheoreticalApproaches
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index