Course info

This module provides a critical appreciation of a once neglected, now burgeoning area. You will examine the development of children’s literature by initially examining the way the ‘fairy tale’ came to be seen as a story form specifically for children, first becoming popular in the Victorian age, and more so in the twentieth, with Disney and more recent examples. You will then look at the development of children’s fiction more generally in Victorian England, commencing with Lewis Carroll’s Alice, moving on to examine other classic fictional texts, culminating in the twenty-first century, with its rather different attitudes towards children and their reading. Different notions of what is deemed appropriate for a child will emerge, along with the continual tension between instructing and entertaining the child, finishing with an examination of more ‘popular’ children’s writers (e.g. Dahl and Rowling),