The Velveteen Rabbit at 100

Lisa Rowe Fraustino

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9781496846006
• eBook ISBN:
  9781496846013
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Contributions by Kelly Blewett, Claudia Camicia, Alisa Clapp-Itnyre, Lisa Rowe Fraustino, Elisabeth Graves, Karlie Herndon, KaaVonia Hinton, Holly Blackford Humes, Melanie Hurley, Kara K. Keeling, Maleeha Malik, Claudia Mills, Elena Paruolo, Scott T. Pollard, Jiwon Rim, Paige Sammartino, Adrianna Zabrzewska, and Wenduo Zhang

First published in 1922 to immediate popularity, The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams has never been out of print. The story has been adapted for film, television, and theater across a range of mediums including animation, claymation, live action, musical, and dance. Frequently, the story inspires a sentimental, nostalgic response—as well as a corresponding dismissive response from critics. It is surprising that, despite its longevity and popularity, The Velveteen Rabbit has inspired a relatively thin dossier of serious literary scholarship, a gap that this volume seeks to correct.

While each essay can stand alone, the chapters in "The Velveteen Rabbit" at 100 flow in a coherent sequence from beginning to end, showing connections between readings from a wide array of critical approaches. Philosophical and cultural studies lead us to consider the meaning of love and reality in ways both timeless and temporal. The Velveteen Rabbit is an Anthropocene Rabbit. He is also disabled. Here a traditional exegetical reading sits alongside queering the text. Collectively, these essays more than double the amount of serious scholarship on The Velveteen Rabbit. Combining hindsight with evolving sensibilities about representation, the contributors offer thirteen ways of looking at this Rabbit that Margery Williams gave us—ways that we can also use to look at other classic storybooks.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction. The Velveteen Rabbit at 100: —Lisa Rowe Fraustino
• Chapter 1. Virtual Realities: Animation and Simulacrum in The Velveteen Rabbit’s Tradition and Legacy: —Holly Blackford Humes
• Chapter 2. Visualizing Velveteen: Original Illustrations and Subsequent Adaptations: —Kelly Blewett and Alisa Clapp-Itnyre
• Chapter 3. Plush, Plastic, and Plato: Purpose and Being in The Velveteen Rabbit and Toy Story: —Melanie Hurley
• Chapter 4. Personhood and Love: Interrogating “Realness” in The Velveteen Rabbit: —Claudia Mills
• Chapter 5. Becoming Real through Matter That Matters: An Onto-Epistemological Analysis of The Velveteen Rabbit: —Adrianna Zabrzewska
• Chapter 6. “Real” Stuffed Animals: Rabbit Tales in the Anthropocene: —Jiwon Rim
• Chapter 7. Illustrations and the Eco-Reality of The Velveteen Rabbit: —Wenduo Zhang
• Chapter 8. The Velveteen Rabbit in Italy: —Claudia Camicia and Elena Paruolo
• Chapter 9. Boy Caretaking and Authority in a Twenty-First-Century Fairy Tale: —Paige Sammartino
• Chapter 10. Born-Again Bunnies: The Velveteen Rabbit, Edward Tulane, and Redemptive Love: —Maleeha Malik, Elisabeth Graves, and Lisa Rowe Fraustino
• Chapter 11. “For Nursery Magic Is Very Strange and Wonderful”: The Queer Space of the Nursery in The Velveteen Rabbit: —Karlie Herndon
• Chapter 12. Metamorphosis: The Disabled Toy Made “Real” as an Eternally Abled Rabbit: —Scott T. Pollard and Kara K. Keeling
• Chapter 13. Whiteness and the Selective Tradition in The Velveteen Rabbit: —KaaVonia Hinton
• About the Contributors
• Index