The Poetics of Childhood

by Roni Natov

Overview

The Poetics of Childhood investigates the sensibility of childhood and the ways writers try to recapture it. It explores the earliest conceptions of innocence and the development of literature about children through contemporary times. It encompasses the pastoral, the dark pastoral, the anti-pastoral; it addresses picture books, fantasy, and realism. It looks with originality at the literature of childhood, inclusive of children's literature and literature about childhood, so that the child and adult can be seen reflexively--the child in the adult and the various stages of childhood as they are remembered and retained in adulthood. It confronts issues of primal and socially constructed desire adn the use of childhood to talk about desire. It is a poetics, a way of imagining the experience of childhood and explores childhood as a particulary fluid and porous time, it also addresses issues of creativity. This is an essential reference for teachers, parents, artists, and writers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781135721770
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	06/03/2014
Series:	Children's Literature and Culture
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	2 MB

Table of Contents

Series Editor’s Foreword; Acknowledgments; Introduction; Chapter 1 Constructions of Innocence; Chapter 2 Carroll and Grahame: Two Versions of Pastoral; Chapter 3 The Body of the Mother; Chapter 4 Childhood and the Green World; Chapter 5 The Dark Pastoral; Chapter 6 The Antipastoral; Chapter 7 The Contemporary Child in Adult Literature; Chapter 8 The Contemporary Child in Children’s Literature;

Editorial Reviews

The Poetics of Childhood is a sterling contribution to the internationally renowned Children's Literature and Culture series.... Natov's commanding work ... demonstrates for me the power of the fine art of close reading in the hands of an experienced reader and writer of literary criticism.

Children's Literature Association Quarterly

"The Poetics of Childhood is a sterling contribution to the internationally renowned Children's Literature and Culture series... Natov's commanding work ... demonstrates for me the power of the fine art of close reading in the hands of an experienced reader and writer of literary criticism." — Children's Literature Association Quarterly
"The Poetics of Childhood is likely to become one of those essential reference books all scholars of children's literature and the literature of childhood will need to have on their shelves." — Lydia Kokkola

From the Publisher