Literature and the Child

The romantic myth of childhood as a transhistorical holy time of innocence and spirituality, uncorrupted by the adult world, has been subjected in recent years to increasingly serious interrogation. Was there ever really a time when mythic ideals were simple, pure, and uncomplicated? The contributors to this book contend -although in widely differing ways and not always approvingly - that our culture is indeed still provided, in this post-modern moment of the very late 20the century, by the romantic conception of childhood which emerged two hundred years ago. In the wake of the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, western Europe experienced another fin de siecle characterised by overwhelming material and institutional change and instability. By historicising the specific political, social, and economic conflicts at work within the notion of romantic childhood, the essayists in this work show us how little these forces have changed over time and how enriching and empowering they can still be for children and their parents. In the first section ""Romanticism continued and contested"", Alan Richardson and Mitzi Myers question the origins and ends of romantic childhood. In ""Romantic ironies, post-modern texts"", Dieter Petzold, Richard Flynn, and James McGavran argue that post-modern texts for both children and adults perpetuate the romantic complexities of childhood. Next, in ""The commerce of children's books"", Anne Lundin and Paula Connolly study the production and marketing of children's classics. Finally, in ""Romantic ideas in cultural confrontations"", William Scheick and Teya Rosenberg investigate interactions of romantic myths with those of other cultural systems.