Artful Dodgers: Reconceiving the Golden Age of Children's Literature by Marah Gu

Description: Artful Dodgers by Marah Gubar In this groundbreaking contribution to Victorian and children's literature studies, Marah Gubar proposes a fundamental reconception of the nineteenth-century attitude toward childhood. The ideology of innocence was much slower to spread than we think, she contends, and the people whom we assume were most committed to it—children's authors and members of the infamous "cult of the child"—were actually deeply ambivalent about this Romantic notion. Rather than wholeheartedly promoting a static ideal of childhood purity, Golden Age children's authors often characterize young people as collaborators who are caught up in the constraints of the culture they inhabit, and yet not inevitably victimized as a result of this contact with adults and their world. Such nuanced meditations on the vexed issue of the child's agency, Gubar suggests, can help contemporary scholars to generate more flexible critical approaches to the study of childhood and children's literature. FORMAT Hardcover LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. In this groundbreaking contribution to Victorian and childrens literature studies, Marah Gubar proposes a fundamental reconception of the nineteenth-century attitude toward childhood. The ideology of innocence was muchslower to spread than we think, she contends, and the people whom we assume were most committed to it--childrens authors and members of the infamous "cult of the child"--were actually deeplyambivalent about this Romantic notion. Rather than wholeheartedly promoting a static ideal of childhood purity, Golden Age childrens authors often characterize young people as collaborators who are caught up in the constraints of the culture they inhabit, and yet not inevitably victimized as a result of this contact with adults and their world. Such nuanced meditations on the vexed issue of the childs agency, Gubar suggests, can help contemporary scholars to generate more flexible criticalapproaches to the study of childhood and childrens literature. Author Biography Marah Gubar is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Childrens Literature Program at the University of Pittsburgh. Table of Contents PrefaceIntroduction: "Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast""Our Field": The Rise of the Child Narrator2: Collaborating with the Enemy: Treasure Island3: Reciprocal Aggression: Unromantic Agency in the Art of Lewis Carroll4: Partners in Crime: E. Nesbit and the Art of Thieving5: The Cult of the Child and the Controversy over Child Actors6: Burnett, Barrie, and the Emergence of Childrens TheatreIndex Review "One of the finest things about this remarkable book is that it does what so much scholarship strives for and so seldom does: it advances the entire field, and by a huge margin."--James R. Kincaid, author of Child Loving: The Erotic Child and Victorian Culture"Challenging received wisdom about Golden Age writing and childrens literature more broadly, Gubar resets the critical stage, rereading canonical texts, reintroducing forgotten ones, and offering a fascinating analysis of childrens theatre. A major work of scholarship."--Kenneth Kidd, University of Florida"Artful Dodgers adds to understandings of the period as a whole. It contributes to a range of vital debates regarding literary form, central nineteenth-century writers, including Carroll, Stevenson, and Barrie, and the hierarchies residing in age and gender. Gubars book is pioneering in demonstrating that Victorian adult writers depicted children much more complexly than modern readers have recognized."--Laurie Langbauer, University of North Carolinaat Chapel Hill"This book will reframe basic assumptions underlying its field. Refusing to condescend either to children or to the Victorians who wrote about them, Marah Gubar generously evokes the surprising-and unsettling-capacities of children and childrens literature."--Andrew H. Miller, Indiana University"Gubar makes a significant and timely contribution by proposing that the vision of the child as blank slate may be less widespread among Golden Age childrens writers than among todays critics. This important and authoritative book requires readers to confront their own prejudices."--Claudia Nelson, Texas A&M University"Artful Dodgers is a lucid, informative, and stimulating work...It deserves wide attention among scholars of both Victorian and childrens literature, not only for the range and acuity of its readings, but also for its reflections on critical method...It is full of incisive close reading, rigorous yet flexible in method, richly and variously contextualized. It is literary study of a high order." -James Eli Adams, New Books Online"Artful Dodgers is an engaging and provocative analysis of the twentieth-century critical construction of Victorian childhood...Through a combination of close attention to the historical evidence and a steadfast refusal to simplify the data, [Gubar] offers a compelling argument that late-nineteenth-century childrens fiction is both more sophisticated and more various than has been widely assumed."-Shelley King, Times Higher Education"Enormously readable and a pleasure to learn from...Gubars work in "reconceiving" Victorian and Edwardian childrens literature is groundbreaking." --Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies"Artful Dodgers reconception of British Golden Age fiction is a signal, deeply original study that epitomizes the kinds of work essential to theorizing and practicing childrens literature studies: real archival research." --The Lion and the Unicorn"Inject[s] a much-needed dose of common sense into ethereal academic discussions and status quo thinking even while enriching rather than diluting the conversation. The arguments put forth in its seven chapters are articulate and well constructed, founded on wide-ranging research, careful thinking, and close reading of the texts rather than on political ideology. Gubars independent approach to understanding the literature of the nineteenth century is astuteand engaging and should be required reading for Victorian scholars of both adult and childrens literature." --Childrens Literature Association Quarterly"[A] groundbreaking contribution to Victorian and childrens literature studies." --Goodreads"[A] substantial and wide-ranging study." --Inis Magazine Long Description In this groundbreaking contribution to Victorian and childrens literature studies, Marah Gubar proposes a fundamental reconception of the nineteenth-century attitude toward childhood. The ideology of innocence was much slower to spread than we think, she contends, and the people whom we assume were most committed to it--childrens authors and members of the infamous "cult of the child"--were actually deeply ambivalent about this Romantic notion. Rather thanwholeheartedly promoting a static ideal of childhood purity, Golden Age childrens authors often characterize young people as collaborators who are caught up in the constraints of the culture they inhabit, and yet not inevitably victimized as a result of this contact with adults and their world. Suchnuanced meditations on the vexed issue of the childs agency, Gubar suggests, can help contemporary scholars to generate more flexible critical approaches to the study of childhood and childrens literature. Review Text "One of the finest things about this remarkable book is that it does what so much scholarship strives for and so seldom does: it advances the entire field, and by a huge margin."--James R. Kincaid, author of Child Loving: The Erotic Child and Victorian Culture"Challenging received wisdom about Golden Age writing and childrens literature more broadly, Gubar resets the critical stage, rereading canonical texts, reintroducing forgotten ones, and offering a fascinating analysis of childrens theatre. A major work of scholarship."--Kenneth Kidd, University of Florida"Artful Dodgers adds to understandings of the period as a whole. It contributes to a range of vital debates regarding literary form, central nineteenth-century writers, including Carroll, Stevenson, and Barrie, and the hierarchies residing in age and gender. Gubars book is pioneering in demonstrating that Victorian adult writers depicted children much more complexly than modern readers have recognized."--Laurie Langbauer, University of North Carolinaat Chapel Hill"This book will reframe basic assumptions underlying its field. Refusing to condescend either to children or to the Victorians who wrote about them, Marah Gubar generously evokes the surprising-and unsettling-capacities of children and childrens literature."--Andrew H. Miller, Indiana University"Gubar makes a significant and timely contribution by proposing that the vision of the child as blank slate may be less widespread among Golden Age childrens writers than among todays critics. This important and authoritative book requires readers to confront their own prejudices."--Claudia Nelson, Texas A&M University"Artful Dodgers is a lucid, informative, and stimulating work...It deserves wide attention among scholars of both Victorian and childrens literature, not only for the range and acuity of its readings, but also for its reflections on critical method...It is full of incisive close reading, rigorous yet flexible in method, richly and variously contextualized. It is literary study of a high order." -James Eli Adams, New Books Online"Artful Dodgers is an engaging and provocative analysis of the twentieth-century critical construction of Victorian childhood...Through a combination of close attention to the historical evidence and a steadfast refusal to simplify the data, [Gubar] offers a compelling argument that late-nineteenth-century childrens fiction is both more sophisticated and more various than has been widely assumed."-Shelley King, Times Higher Education"Enormously readable and a pleasure to learn from...Gubars work in "reconceiving" Victorian and Edwardian childrens literature is groundbreaking." --Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies"Artful Dodgers reconception of British Golden Age fiction is a signal, deeply original study that epitomizes the kinds of work essential to theorizing and practicing childrens literature studies: real archival research." --The Lion and the Unicorn"Inject[s] a much-needed dose of common sense into ethereal academic discussions and status quo thinking even while enriching rather than diluting the conversation. The arguments put forth in its seven chapters are articulate and well constructed, founded on wide-ranging research, careful thinking, and close reading of the texts rather than on political ideology. Gubars independent approach to understanding the literature of the nineteenth century is astuteand engaging and should be required reading for Victorian scholars of both adult and childrens literature." --Childrens Literature Association Quarterly"[A] groundbreaking contribution to Victorian and childrens literature studies." --Goodreads"[A] substantial and wide-ranging study." --Inis Magazine Review Quote Reviews of the hardback edition:"One of the finest things about this remarkable book is that it does what so much scholarship strives for and so seldom does: it advances the entire field, and by a huge margin."--James R. Kincaid, author of Child Loving: The Erotic Child and Victorian Culture"Challenging received wisdom about Golden Age writing and childrens literature more broadly, Gubar resets the critical stage, rereading canonical texts, reintroducing forgotten ones, and offering a fascinating analysis of childrens theatre. A major work of scholarship."--Kenneth Kidd, University of Florida" Artful Dodgers adds to understandings of the period as a whole. It contributes to a range of vital debates regarding literary form, central nineteenth-century writers, including Carroll, Stevenson, and Barrie, and the hierarchies residing in age and gender. Gubars book is pioneering in demonstrating that Victorian adult writers depicted children much more complexly than modern readers have recognized."--Laurie Langbauer, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill"This book will reframe basic assumptions underlying its field. Refusing to condescend either to children or to the Victorians who wrote about them, Marah Gubar generously evokes the surprising-and unsettling-capacities of children and childrens literature."--Andrew H. Miller, Indiana University"Gubar makes a significant and timely contribution by proposing that the vision of the child as blank slate may be less widespread among Golden Age childrens writers than among todays critics. This important and authoritative book requires readers to confront their own prejudices."--Claudia Nelson, Texas A&M University"Artful Dodgers is a lucid, informative, and stimulating work...It deserves wide attention among scholars of both Victorian and childrens literature, not only for the range and acuity of its readings, but also for its reflections on critical method...It is full of incisive close reading, rigorous yet flexible in method, richly and variously contextualized. It is literary study of a high order." -James Eli Adams, New Books Online"Artful Dodgers is an engaging and provocative analysis of the twentieth-century critical construction of Victorian childhood...Through a combination of close attention to the historical evidence and a steadfast refusal to simplify the data, [Gubar] offers a compelling argument that late-nineteenth-century childrens fiction is both more sophisticated and more various than has been widely assumed."-Shelley King, Times Higher Education"Enormously readable and a pleasure to learn from...Gubars work in "reconceiving" Victorian and Edwardian childrens literature is groundbreaking." -- Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies Feature Conferences: MLA, Childrens Literature Association, North American Victorian Studies Association, and the Northeast Victorian Studies AssociationProspective Courses: Childrens Literature, History of Childrens LiteratureSelling point: Offers a new interpretation of the often mentioned but rarely discussed "cult of the child," one which (for the first time) takes into account the Victorians own richly self-aware discourse on this topic and uses it to depart from the trendy notion that the Victorians "eroticized innocence" (an idea popularized by James Kincaid)Selling point: Makes use of previously ignored texts by female childrens authors to offer a new account of the rise of the child narrator, as well as unearthing a wealth of new evidence about the presence of Victorian children on the stage and in the audience to map out childrens theater as a distinct dramatic subgenreSelling point: Challenges the critical commonplace that childrens authors and members of the cult of the child wholeheartedly embraced Romantic notions about childhood innocence Details ISBN0195336259 Author Marah Gubar Short Title ARTFUL DODGERS Language English ISBN-10 0195336259 ISBN-13 9780195336252 Media Book Format Hardcover Year 2009 Subtitle Reconceiving the Golden Age of Childrens Literature Imprint Oxford University Press Inc Place of Publication New York Country of Publication United States UK Release Date 2009-03-19 AU Release Date 2009-03-19 NZ Release Date 2009-03-19 US Release Date 2009-03-19 Illustrator Anais Goldemberg Birth 1927 Affiliation Lecturer, University of Fort Hare Position Professor Qualifications Ph.D. Pages 280 Publisher Oxford University Press Inc Publication Date 2009-03-19 Alternative 9780199756742 DEWEY 820.9928209034 Illustrations 15 black and white halftones Audience Tertiary & Higher Education We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. 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