Victorian Children's Literature Research Papers (original) (raw)

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a remarkable text which has endured as one of the world's most popular
children's classics - but is it really a children's book? Or perhaps much more than that? In an exploration of how the
genre of 'children's literature' emerged in the 19th century, and what Victorians considered appropriate literature
for the young, this talk will seek answers to this question in the kaleidoscopic landscape of Victorian Children's
Literature.

In discussions surrounding subalternity, theorists have predominantly focussed upon the notion of difference based upon binary models of gender, race, colonialism or a North/South divide. However, until recently, little attention has been paid to children as a subject of critical attention, in spite of the fact that they are unquestionably subordinate in terms of social, political and economic power, and ‘[p]ower is related to representation: which representations have cognitive authority or can secure hegemony, which do not have authority or are not hegemonic’ (Beverley, 1999, p. 1). Although clearly there are many representations of children as characters within literature, there are very few attempts to give the child a ‘voice’, and there are two main reasons for this void. The first is that ‘the very ideologies that shape our perceptions of [children] pre-determine that we view them as not having agency or consequence in ideology – they are helpless, they are innocent, they are too ignorant to represent themselves. (Honeyman, 2005, p. ii). The second is a problem that is yet to find a resolution within subaltern studies; how does an author (who is inevitably part of the so-called intellectual elite) effectively represent a subordinated subject. This article will explore strategies that have been used to overcome the difficulties of representing children in literature, and how this group fits into the theoretical framework of subaltern studies.

In twenty-first-century popular psychology and self-help literature, the “inner child” refers to an original or true self that serves as a repository of wisdom and creativity for its adult counterpart. This essay traces the modern inner child back to the nineteenth-century new religious movement known as New Thought, which emphasized positive thinking as a means to health and prosperity. Emma Curtis Hopkins, the leading New Thought teacher of the 1880s and 1890s, described an idealized “Man Child” within each adult woman who could lead her to spiritual serenity and worldly success. Frances Hodgson Burnett fictionalized this figure in her blockbuster novel Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886), whose eponymous child hero helps his mother achieve undreamed-of wealth and status. He also serves as her proxy outside of the domestic sphere, allowing her to reach personal goals without appearing selfish or inappropriately ambitious. The novel’s enormous popularity may have had something to do with this symbiotic relationship between mother and son. Then as now, the inner child helped women reconcile social pressures to be selfless and giving with career pursuits and self-indulgent behavior. The persistence of the inner child suggests that contemporary feminism still has work to do in enabling women to embrace opportunities without guilt.

- by Anne Stiles
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- American Literature, New Religious Movements, Psychology, English Literature

Planning is a way of projecting our intentions, that is, a method of deciding what we want to accomplish or to plan, means to project, forecast, design or make or chart our a course. From these views, it can be summarized that planning refers to the act of deciding in advance what is to be done, how and when to do it, where and who is to do it in order to achieve the goals or objectives of the system.

In the real world, Alice’s life only involved around being “punished” even though half the times she was only “anxious to be of use.” She is gleeful when realization dawns on her that in the Looking-Glass world that “there’ll be no one here to scold me away from the fire...what fun would it be, when they see me through the glass here, and can’t get at me.” Through this exclamation of Alice, it can be seen that she was trying to avoid confrontation with the adults of her family, and her childlike excitement comes forth in knowing they “can’t get at her.”

In recent years, many of George MacDonald’s narrative, poetic, critical and theological works have been made available in digital formats — which has opened up new possibilities for investigating these works. The aim of the present paper is to explore some of the new possibilities by approaching George MacDonald’s literary works using a quantitative method of stylistic research that has recently been termed “corpus stylistics”.

Children’s literature was not recognized as a genre until the 18th century, and only in
the late 19th century, did it start to respond to its audience’s interests. With the acknowledgment
of the audience’s interest, the genre has reached its golden age, generally referred to as the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This change was achieved by a shift in both language and content, moving from didactic and religious narratives to more imaginative ones with fantastic elements and simpler language. Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth (1961) are significant examples of this achievement, sharing many similarities in content and form. This paper aims to analyze the attractive language and style of these books and reveal the ways the books promote reading to young audiences.
To understand the impact of language and imaginary journeys of Alice and Milo, close reading will be the main method of literary analysis used throughout the paper. One of the most identifiable characteristics of these books is their frequent use of wordplay such as homophonic and idiomatic puns. These puns create humour, and along with the use of supernatural elements, they provide an easier reading experience for children. Milo and Alice represent many children who are confused about the adult world and the education it requires. At the end of their journeys, the protagonists feel relieved and more enthusiastic about the adult world, so that child readers can sympathize with them and become motivated to learn more.
As a result of the representation of children’s struggle in the adult world through Alice and Milo, the elements of imagination, and the humorous language; Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Phantom Tollbooth attract children to learning through reading.

- by David Pike
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- Victorian Children's Literature, Walter Benjamin, Neovictorian Studies, Hugh Lofting
- by Shih-Wen Sue Chen
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- Children's Literature, Colonialism, Victorian Children's Literature, Empire
- by Claudia Nelson
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- Victorian Children's Literature, Frances Browne

On the Jubjub bird and on Charles Darwin and evolution being possibly addressed in Lewis Carroll's and Henry Holiday's "The Hunting of the Snark". --- 1st: 2015-01-01, update (minor changes): 2015-01-02 19:07 UTC. --- Errata (corrected on 2015-01-08): I used the Name "Dodgson" without having explained, that "Lewis Carroll" was the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. --- 2015-10-19: More info on the source of Darwin's portrait. --- 2015-12-13: Raymond Schumann told me (related to Page 5, line 155): "The Victorians made morning calls in the afternoon."
https://www.google.de/search?q=The+Victorians+made+morning+calls+in+the+afternoon --- 2016-02-08: Additional image at bottom of page 1. --- 2016-02-20: Carroll's/Dodgson's obsession with time. --- 2016-03-12: Removal of empty page. Illustration by Grandeville added.

The theme of religious belief occurs with increasing frequency and depth
across Antonia Forest’s books and is central to the development of several main characters, including Nicola, Ann and Patrick. In this article, I focus particularly on three novels, The Thuggery Affair (1965), The Attic Term (1976) and Run Away Home (1982), and suggest that Forest’s treatment of religion therein testifies to her belief that teenagers are well able to deal with emotional complexities bound up with adherence to and rejection of religious belief, practice and identity. Her characters exhibit a specifically theological adeptness which is almost unparalleled in contemporaneous novels for children, chiming far more closely with works of an earlier age.

George MacDonald’s "The Light Princess" details representation of the female coming-of-age body, mature body, and aging, menopausal body to reveal how his modern fairy tale both utilizes and exposes long-standing social codes imposed on female’s reproductive capacity. Furthermore, in his depiction of Makemnoit—the bitter and aged woman who wreaks havoc on the kingdom’s water supply—MacDonald’s narrative illustrates cultural fears surrounding menopausal or reproductively atypical women. Utilizing the frightening female archetype, MacDonald’s fairy tale highlights long-standing cultural fears within society while noting the pressures placed upon Victorian females to fulfill stereotypically ideological gender roles.

- by Jacqueline H Harris
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- British Literature, Mythology, Women's Studies, Victorian Studies

In my book L’esthétique du jeu dans les Alice de Lewis Carroll (The Aesthetics of Play in Lewis Carroll’s Alice books), I have argued that Carroll’s own adaptation of Wonderland for children “aged from nought to five,” that is to say The Nursery Alice, so strictly constrains the implied reader’s participation that she cannot playfully counter-interpellate the text (thus referring to Judith Butler’s theory of subjection, subjectification and counter-interpellation). In other words, I have shown that the reader of The Nursery Alice cannot indulge in what Roger Caillois calls “paidia,” the impulsive manifestation of a play instinct, but can only adhere to “ludus,” the need to conform to rules. Contrariwise, as the Tweedle brothers would say, even if the 1865 Alice tries to limit the implied reader’s role, she can actively counter-interpellate the text, and play with and against its rules.
For this presentation, I’d like to focus on the reader’s cooperation with the book-as-object, and reveal how the tension between subjection and agency characterizes both Carroll and Tenniel’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and paper engineering artist Robert Sabuda’s adaptation of this classic (2003). As Mou-Lan Wong has convincingly suggested, the reader is actively involved when reading the original Alice books, thereby, I would add, becoming a playful reader. The page-turning mechanism is exploited to the maximum, so much so that turning the pages does not merely mean getting access to the rest of the tale, but actually creating some of the Wonderland characters (145) and ultimately creating Wonderland (144). Similarly, when Sabuda discusses the creation of his pop-up books, he notes that the tension between subjection and agency lies at the core of his work: he wants to make “the paper listen and obey” (9) while knowing at the same time that “the paper will do what it wants to do” (10). My talk will then address the following question: is the reader of Sabuda’s Alice as playfully involved in the book as the reader of Carroll and Tenniel’s version is? or does the (too?) intricate pop-up device actually plan the reader’s role so much that her intervention is drastically limited? In other words, can Sabuda’s reader indulge in what Caillois calls “paidia” while at the same time recognizing the “ludic” rules of the pop-up game, or is she forced to abide by these rules without counter-interpellating them, consequently relinquishing any chance of being a playful reader?

- by Virginie Iché
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- Play, Children's Literature, Victorian Children's Literature, Reader Response

The late Victorian period marked a turning point in the history of Dante’s reception in Anglo-American culture, with the macroscopic growth in the production of creative, critical and scholarly responses to Dante’s life and works. Far from being a male-pre- rogative, Victorian dantismo became one of the new territories of endeavour claimed by a large community of women writers who established themselves as professional mediators of Dantean knowledge with works targeted to a wide, socio-culturally var- ied public of both adult and young readers. Through the comparative textual and book-historical analysis of four children retellings of the Commedia by Rose E. Selfe (1887), Emily Underdown (1895), Elizabeth Harrison (1894), and Mary MacGregor’s (1909), the articles explores the ways in which “wonder” is employed as a narrative, hermeneutical and visual tool for mediating the literary and moral vision of Dante’s Commedia.

The works of Charles Dickens (1812-1870) are remarkable for his meticulous attention to the polyphony of surrounding society. Thanks to his personal experience, his novels also reveal an intense concern about the vulnerability of children. Away from the description of exploited or abused children of his well-known major novels, the novella A Holiday Romance (1868) provides some enlightening reflections on the cultural representation of childhood during the last decades of the Victorian age. In my paper I analyze Dickens’s choice of introducing the child narrator in his novella, and emphasize why is this innovation so relevant within the context of Victorian children’s literature.

- by Beatrice Moja
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- English Literature, Victorian Studies, Sociolinguistics, Children's Literature

This study traces the evolution of holistic education in Britain from the early nineteenth century to the schools of the new millennium. What Edward Thring, the mid-Victorian headmaster of Uppingham School, termed 'true manliness' is the... more

- by Malcolm Tozer
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- Gender Studies, Education, Victorian Studies, History of Religion

Der Struwwelpeter, which has been variously translated as Slovenly Peter, Shock-headed Peter, and Tousle-Headed Peter, is a collection of eleven children’s poems written by Dr. Heinrich Hoffman in 1844. In its assorted translations, Struwwelpeter is arguably the nest-known children’s book of the nineteenth century. Few nurseries in Europe or North America were without a tattered copy of it, although the work was not originally intended for a public audience. Indeed, Hoffman was always somewhat embarrassed by its great success: “Those bad boys got further around the world than I did . . . They learned all kinds of languages that I don’t even understand . . . it is quite natural that one would reprint them with enthusiasm in North America,” he wrote. As a doctor who frequently had to make house calls on children, Hoffman created a repertoire of rhymes and pictures to distract them during his visits. One Christmas, discouraged by the selection of children’s …

A court trial sceene by Henry Holiday in an illustration to Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark". Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) did not want Henry Holiday to depict the Snark in the illustrations. But Dodgson accepted an depiction which shows a Snark appearing in "The Barrister's Dream". Here again, Holiday alluded to Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder.

- by Götz Kluge
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- Visual Studies, English Literature, Children's Literature, Children's reading

Presented at the North American Victorian Studies supernumerary conference at Florence, Italy, May 2017.

- by Joan Passey
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- Comparative Literature, English Literature, Victorian Studies, Literature
- by Götz Kluge
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- Visual Culture, Children's and Young Adult Literature, Deconstruction, Iconoclasm

Both Anglican factions labored to win the support of the next generation, but zealous Protestants approached this task with great urgency. They feared that duplicitous Anglo-Catholics were “Romanizing” their children through the Church of England’s school system and the confessional. As a result, Evangelical Anglicans sought to protect their children by firmly ensconcing them within their anti-Catholic Protestant subculture. While the historiography relating to British anti-Catholicism is vast and sophisticated, historians have thus far paid relatively little attention to how the ideology was successfully transmitted between generations. In fact, at least in Britain, children did not always simply absorb anti-Catholicism by osmosis through contact with zealous adults.
Close examination of the magazines promoted by anti-Ritualist Protestant youth organizations demonstrates that sharing stories about the dangers of Catholicism was a common method of binding children—of both genders—more closely to their parents’ theological subculture. In fact, adult authors in the era of transition used the dramatic and sometimes violent tropes associated with sensation fiction and the structure of popular juvenile penny dreadfuls to transmit anti-Catholicism to boys and girls. The search for “relevance” to keep youth within the religious fold is far from being an innovation of the late-twentieth century Church Growth Movement. Zealous anti-Catholic Protestants were not just born; they were also formed through children’s fear of violence and supposed fascination with it. As a result, as strange as it may seem to our contemporary religious sensibilities, it was not uncommon for the children of devoted Protestant parents to curl up with bedtime stories detailing the horrors of the Inquisition, the “Iron Virgin,” self-flagellation, or the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.

Paper given at the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing's 2016 conference. Partial abstract: By examining a body of prefaces written by women as introductions to the world of science and scientific theory, the relationship between readers, consumerism, and knowledge sharing is more clearly defined and delineated. Using close reading, this paper explores and tracks pedagogical practices and theory, the genesis and flow of ideas, and the systems of authorship employed by women writers during the Romantic era. Since the preface is where an author presents or comments on her work, it represents the most compelling piece of text to illustrate “the author’s interpretation of the text or, if you prefer, his statement of intent” (Genette 1997). For researchers, these authorial modes of communication are essential for inquiries regarding the paths women took in order to publish, the development of networks of knowledge and the dissemination of knowledge as well as the diverse approaches to translating complex scientific theory for the public.

This essay reads Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) alongside influential mid-century Victorian psychology studies—paying special attention to those that Carroll owned—in order to trace the divergence of Carroll’s literary representations of the “dream child” from its prevailing medical association with mental illness. The goals of this study are threefold: to trace the medico-historical links between dream-states and childhood, to investigate the medical reasons behind the pathologization of dream-states, and to understand how Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland contributed to Victorian interpretations of the child’s mind.

- by Götz Kluge
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- Visual Studies, English Literature, Literature, Children's Literature

The "Billiard-marker" in Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark"

- by Michael Sappol
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- Gender Studies, Sex and Gender, Social Identity, History of Medicine

[left]: Gustave Doré: Plate I of the illustrations to chapter 1 in Miguel de Cervantes' "Don Quixote" (1863 edition). [right]: Gustave Doré: Illustration to John Milton's "Paradise Lost", Book VI, 1866. [center]: Henry Holiday (engraver: Joseph Swain): Illustration to chapter "The Beaver's Lesson" in Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark", 1876.

- by Götz Kluge
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- Visual Studies, Illustrations, Visual Culture, Illustration

BDBB Englische Literatur Großbritannien Personale Informationsmittel Lewis Carroll Alice im Wunderland 21-2 Die Erfindung von Alice im Wunderland : wie alles begann / Peter Hunt. Aus dem Englischen von Gisella M. Vorderober-meier.-Darmstadt : wbg Theiss, 2021.-128 S. : Ill. ; 28 cm.-Einheitssacht.: The making of Lewis Carroll's Alice and the invention of wonderland <dt.>.-ISBN 978-3-8062-4264-5 : EUR 28.00, EUR 22.40 für Mitglieder der WBG [#7379] Die Kinderbücher 1 von dem unter dem Pseudonym Lewis Carroll schreiben-den Mathematikdozenten Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898) über Alice im Wunderland gehören zu den berühmtesten der Literaturgeschich-te. Sie sind in zahllosen Ausgaben, Übersetzungen und Bearbeitungen (ein-schließlich Filmen, Hörspielen und Musik-und Tanztheater), oft reich illu-striert, in aller Welt verbreitet. Alice im Wunderland ist damit gleichsam ein moderner Mythos geworden, der als kulturelle Referenz auch denjenigen bekannt ist, die Lewis Carrolls Bücher selbst nie gelesen haben. 1 Englische Kinder-und Jugendliteratur : eine Einführung / von Thomas Kull-mann.-Berlin : Erich Schmidt, 2008.-248 S. : Ill. ; 21 cm.-(Grundlagen der An-glistik und Ameri kanistik ; 31) (ESV basics).-ISBN 978-3-503-09842-2 : EUR 17.80 [9698].-Rez.: IFB 07-2-280 http://swbplus.bsz-bw.de/bsz277379997rez.htm-Handbook of the English novel , 1830-1900 / ed. by Martin Middeke and Monika Pietrzak-Franger.-Berlin [u.a.] : De Gruy ter, 2020.-X, 676 S. ; 25 cm.-(Handbooks of English and Ame-rican studies ; 9).-ISBN 978-3-11-037641-8 : EUR 199.95, EUR 179.95 (Reihen-Pr.) [#6973].-Hier S. 351-365.-Rez.: IFB 20-3 http://www.informationsmittel-fuer-bibliotheken.de/showfile.php?id=10380-Klassiker der Kinder-und Jugend-literatur / hrsg. von Bettina Hurrelmann.-Orig.-Ausg.-Frankfurt am Main : Fi-scher-Taschenbuch-Verlag, 1995.-581 S. ; 19 cm.-([Fischer-Taschenbücher] ; 12668).-ISBN 3-596-12668-1 : DM 24.90 [2912]. Darin S. 107-130 ein Beitrag zu Alice im Wunderland von Inka Friese.-Rez.: IFB 97-1/2-078 https

(Encyclopedia article.) One of the most popular children’s books of the Victorian era (1837-1901) and the first quarter of the twentieth century, Charles Kingsley’s The Water-Babies: A Fairy-Tale for a Land-Baby also captured the adult imagination with its exploration of natural science and Darwin’s recently-published theories on evolution. Yet, the book’s problematic statements on race and class, along with Kingsley’s patronizing and digressive style, diminished its reputation by the turn of the twenty-first century. https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=8099

- by Kris Swank
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- Children's Literature, Victorian Children's Literature

In Henry Holiday's illustrations to Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark" you can find a Bellman, a Baker, a Barrister, a Billiard-marker, a Banker, a maker of Bonnets and Hoods, a Broker, a Butcher and a Beaver. Carroll also... more

- by Götz Kluge
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- British Literature, Nonsense, Victorian Literature, Victorian Children's Literature