ENGLISH 609.45 - The Child in the Midst: Placing the Child in Victorian Fiction
Instructor: Dr. Rod McGillis
Monday, 10:00 - 12:30
Mail to: rmcgilli [at] ucalgary [dot] ca
Course Description:
Course title: I take the title, "The Child in the Midst" from a sermon by George MacDonald, published in Unspoken Sermons (1866). We will use this sermon as a starting point, along with Dickens's famous "Frauds on the Fairies," and then look at some more recent commentary on the child and childhood by Rose and Kincaid (see below).
Course focus: this course will locate the child in a variety of Victorian narrative texts (mostly texts best described as "children's literature"). The focus is not simply on the child as "child" (whatever this might be), but rather on: 1) constructions of the child; 2) the child as material reality; 3) political implications of the child; 4) the child as economic potential; 5) the child as imperial subject; and 6) the child as metaphor. Before we encounter Victorian children, we will consider Jacqueline Rose's provocative study, The Case of Peter Pan, or The Impossibility of Children's Fiction (1984/1993). Another essential text is James Kincaid's Child Loving (1992). Armed with some theoretical approaches to the "child," we will begin looking at specific Victorian texts.
Course objectives:
- To come to some understanding of the theoretical implications of the child, childhood, and children's literature.
- To broaden our sense of Victorian literature by reading some neglected work (especially by women).
- To have some sense of the range of literature created for an audience of young readers.
- To look for development in books for the young.
We should end this course with some experience of cross-writing, a phenomenon often located in the late twentieth century. Canonical writers such as Charlotte Bronte, John Ruskin, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Christina Rossetti, and Thomas Hardy wrote with children in mind. Conversely, canonical writers for children such as George MacDonald, Charles Kingsley, Lewis Carroll, and Oscar Wilde did not write only with children in mind. These writers engaged in cross-writing. We will examine the implications of such writing.
Reading List:
a) Required Reading
- Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (1847)
-"Frauds on the Fairies" (1853), an essay by Dickens reacting to fairy tales by George Cruikshank
-William Thackery, The Rose and the Ring (1855)
-"The Child in the Midst" (1866), a sermon by George MacDonald that sets out one view of childhood in mid Victorian England
-Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
-Charles Dickens, The Magic Fishbone (1868)
-Anne Thackery Ritchie, Five Old Friends and a Young Prince (1868)
-Jean Ingelow, Mopsa the Fairy (1869)
-George MacDonald, At the Back of the North Wind (1872)
-Christina Rossetti, Speaking Likenesses (1872)
-Mary Molesworth, The Cuckoo Clock (1877)
-Lucy Lane Clifford, "The New Mother" (1882)
-Thomas Hardy, Our Exploits at West Poley (1883)
-Augusta Webster, Daffodil and the Croaxaxicans (1884)
-Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess (1905)
b) Essential Criticism
-Jacqueline Rose, The Case of Peter Pan; or the Impossibility of Children's Literature
-James Kincaid, Child Loving
c) Supplementary Reading
-a sampling of the picture books of Randolph Caldecott, Kate Greenaway, and Walter Crane
-Edward Salmon, Literature for Little Ones (1888)
-Ann Higgonet, Pictures of Innocence (1998)
Note: the required reading list looks formidable. However, the list contains 2 essays (short), 1 short story, and four short novels.
Assignments:
One 1,500 word paper - 35%
One 5,000 word paper - 45%
Discussion & Discussion Board: 20%
Note: one paper is conference length, and the other is journal length. Topics for papers are the responsibility of the student (in collaboration with the instructor).
