GL/EN 3636 6.00

Children’s Literature

In this course, we study children’s literature spanning several centuries, but its primary focus is 19th, 20th and 21st century texts. According to Peter Hunt, “The study of children’s literature involves three elements – the literature, the children and the adult critics. The relationship between these is complex, partly because childhood and ‘the child’ are difficult to define, partly because adults need to ‘construct’ the child… and partly because the literature is assumed to be ‘good for’ children in some way.” These three elements shape this course’s exploration of possible ways of reading children’s literature. In addition to the works of fiction, this course incorporates a variety of theoretical texts, which address such concerns as constructions of childhood, definitions of children’s literature, and the issue of power and childhood. This selection of primary and theoretical course readings enables our examination of children and young adult anxieties about selfhood, gender, class, sexual orientation, and race. The serious issues that modern children’s literature delves into — the struggle of identity, of class inequity, of racial oppression, of child exploitation, and of sexual awakening — depart fundamentally from literature pre-dating the twentieth century.