The Mighty Child
Time and power in children's literature
The Mighty Child offers an existentialist approach to the theorization and criticism of children’s literature, nuancing the academic claim that children’s literature, specifically defined as ‘didactic’, alienates childhood from adulthood and disempowers its implied child reader. This volume recentres the theoretical debate around the constructions of time and power which characterize conceptions of childhood and adulthood in children’s literature. The ‘hidden’, didactic adult of children’s literature, this volume argues, is not solely the dictatorial planner of the child’s future, but also a disempowered entity, yearning for unpredictability in the semi-educational, semi-aesthetic endeavor of the children’s book. Leaning on current work in the field of children’s literature theory, on French phenomenological existentialism, and on the philosophy and sociology of childhood, The Mighty Child is addressed to contemporary theorists and critics of children’s literature.
[Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition, 4] 2015. xii, 226 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
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Table of figures | pp. ix–x
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Acknowledgements | pp. xi–xii
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Introduction | pp. 1–12
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Part I. Time
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From puer aeternus to puer existens: The advent of the child “thrown forth” | pp. 15–42
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Childhood and the future | pp. 43–66
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Part II. Otherness
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“Gaps”, desire, and the didactic discourse | pp. 69–102
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Problems of others | pp. 103–144
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Part III. Commitment
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“An exigence and a gift”: Committed children’s literature | pp. 147–184
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The pedagogical romance | pp. 185–204
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Conclusion | pp. 205–210
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Bibliography
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First names index | pp. 221–222
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Name index | pp. 221–222
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Subject index | pp. 223–226
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Nouns index | pp. 223–226
“Clementine Beauvais has produced a remarkable book. The Mighty Child is at once perceptive, philosophical, sophisticated and engaging. Her existentialist approach is applied to a fascinating body of 'committed' children's books produced in the West since 1950 to produce readings that illuminate the paradoxes of power and ambivalence about the future in much writing for children. This is a book that shows the value of children's literature as a primary source for scholars working in many fields. It is also a deeply optimistic book that points to the potential for positive change through the literature of childhood.”
Kimberley Reynolds, Newcastle University
“
The Mighty Child is an impressive book which makes an important and innovative contribution to its field. Its theorisation of existentialism and children’s literature is lucidly written, and its theoretical understanding and arguments are astute. Providing new and significant analysis of the texts it considers, this is a work that promises to become essential reading for those interested in theoretical approaches to children’s literature.”
Adrienne Gavin, Canterbury Christ Church University, UK
“The Mighty Child’s reading of time and power in children’s literature redefines basic concepts of children’s literature studies, such as the child, adult, didacticism or hope, and marks new pathways for children’s literature scholarship and criticism. Its coherent, informed and lucid confronting and merging of existentialist writings with recent children’s literature criticism and divergent children’s literature texts – from classics to recent work, from novels to poetry, from picturebooks to crossover literature – can be seen as a demonstration of one of the multiple intellectually stimulating directions which children’s literature studies might take if they dare to try. Future theoretical and historical testing of its arguments and conclusions, their development, confirmation or rejection, will hopefully have the same revealing effect.”
Marijana Hameršak, University of Zagreb, in Libri & Liberi 5(1): 262-263
Cited by (50)
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Cameron, Danielle
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Duthoy, Leander
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Dziri, Nourhene
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Plourde, Aubrey
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Nikolajeva, Maria
Beauvais, Clementine
Beauvais, Clémentine
Beauvais, Clémentine
[no author supplied]
[no author supplied]
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Subjects
Literature & Literary Studies
Main BIC Subject
CFG: Semantics, Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis
Main BISAC Subject
LIT009000: LITERARY CRITICISM / Children's & Young Adult Literature