Children

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• Childrens Literature in a Postmodern World

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Childrens Lit Simple? Hardly.

• Deconstructing childrens literature
• Understanding dominant ideologies
• Cultural myths
• Narrative aesthetic representations
• Our insights derive from simplicity

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Moral and Gender Narratives

• Male imperative in early 20th century

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Moral and Gender Narratives

• Little Women feminine piety or feminist
  tomboy?

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Censorship of Kiddie Lit

• What is censorship?
• Is it ever okay?

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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finnby Mark Twain
(1884)
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Little Red Riding HoodGrimm Fairy Tales
(McLoughlin Bros, 1888 edition)
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A Fishy Tale

• Story Time
• Arlene Sardine, by Christopher Raschka (1998)

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The Merits of Arlene
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The Merits of Arlene

• Vegetarianism
• Dont eat dead animals
• including fish

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The Merits of Arlene

• Farming and Fishing
• Noble Professions
• of land and sea

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The Merits of Arlene

• Altruism
• Self-Sacrifice for the Common Good
• suicide bombers?
• There are those who do not fear death the
  promise of immortality

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The Merits of Arlene

• Self-Love and Acceptance
• Arlene accepts her normative fate
• It is what it is.
• Im a sardine. I die. Thats what I do.
• Get used to it.

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The Merits of Arlene

• OR . . .

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The Merits of Arlene

• The price of giving in to your oppressors
• DEATH

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The Merits of Arlene

• So You Want to Be a Sardine.
• These are the consequences.
• Celebrate
• Conform
• Accept
• Die
• and that may be okay.

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Fantasy in Childrens Fiction

• The appeal?
• Metaphorical portal

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Hieronymous Bosch left and right wings of Last
Judgment triptych (ca. 1500)
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Fantasy in Childrens Fiction

• can be said to hover between the states of
  perception that William Blake had labeled
  innocence and experience. From the vantage point
  of experience, an adult imagination re-creates an
  earlier childhood self in order to steer it
  toward the reality principle. From the vantage
  point of innocence . . . That childhood agent may
  resist the imposition of adult values. . . .
• U.C. Knoepflmacher, The Balancing of Child and
  Adult An Approach to Victorian Fantasies for
  Children (1986)

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Hieronymous Bosch central panel of the Last
Judgment triptych (ca. 1500)
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(No Transcript)
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Hieronymous Bosch Garden of Earthly Delights
(ca. 1500)
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Fantasy in Childrens Fiction

• The Literary Construction
• Beginning Fictional Reality
• Middle Adventure, Dream, Magic
• End Resolution, or Return to Reality

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Fantasy in Childrens Fiction

• The Fictional Reality
• May embody normative middle class values
• Represents safety, predictability
• Ignorant Bliss

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Fantasy in Childrens Fiction

• The Magical Adventure
• Complete defiance of natural laws
• Indulgence in forbidden wishes emotions
• Dangerous tragedy

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Fantasy in Childrens Fiction

• The Return to Reality
• Enter, perform symbolic task, return
• Enter, dream, return
• Enter, locate fantasy, repeat

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Fantasy in Childrens Fiction