Robin Feuer Miller
Edytha Macy Gross Professor of Humanities
Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature
Office: Shiffman 215, x 6-3192
Office hours: Monday, 5:00 to 6:00, Wednesday 1:00 to 2:00 and 5:00 to 6:00 and by appointment.
Children’s Literature and Constructions of Childhood: COML/ENG 140b
Catalogue description:
Whether children’s literature has sought to civilize or to subvert, to moralize or to enchant, it forms a bedrock for the adult sensibility. Childhood reading reflects the unresolved complexity of the experience of childhood itself as well as larger cultural shifts around the globe in values and beliefs.
Course requirements:
Since you each have an intimate relationship to childhood, part of the task of this course willbe to reflect on your own childhood as filtered through the works we read. I urge each of you to keep your own journal of responses to the works we read. Students will also write two short response papers (two double-spaced pages) in which you connect one or more of our readings to these more personal reflections.
We will have amid-term examination in class and you will be assigned two additional response papers (for a total of four). These response papers will form an important part of our class discussions.
I always try to build a strong oral component into my classes, whether through asking students to lead a discussion, participate on a panel, or give a brief oral report to the class. Once I know the final enrollment of the course, I will decide upon the appropriate strategy for engaging the students as fully as possible. Our last two classes of the semester will involve each of you in group conversations and conclusions.
Course Description
Children’s Literature and Constructions of Childhood
Whether children’s literature has sought to civilize or to subvert, to moralize or to enchant, it has formed part of the essential bedrock for the adult sensibility. The fairy tales and stories we read as children reflect the unresolved complexity of the experience of childhood itself as well as larger cultural shifts in values and beliefs. Moreover, successive adult generations reconstruct their own childhoods through what they read to their children. The course begins with a section on fairy tales. We will look briefly at how these tales migrate from country to country and in so doing take on the particular values of the culture at hand. We will investigate works of fiction written primarily for children as well as works of fiction about childhood. In what ways is it interesting to compare such works?
Most of the readings on this list reflect major literary themes as refracted through a lens presumably suitable for children. These works explore questions of colonialism, political ideology, science, religion, as well as a range of dark personal themes such as disease, disability, mutilation, loss and death. Many of these texts, however, also express the kind of sheer joy and abandon that a child can experience. We will also read two works about childhood that are not primarily directed to an audience of children. (In this respect they resemble many of the earliest fairy tales that we are also reading. There too adults often constituted the primary audience.) All the items on this reading list are also all compelling works of literature.
Course schedule
I will hand out a schedule with dates for each reading on the first day of class!
But these are the stories and books we will read over the course of the semester. A feast. Our reading schedule will roughly follow the outlines below:
Introduction and:
“Little Red Riding Hood”
“The Story of Grandmother”
Charles Perrault, “Little Red Riding Hood”
The Brothers Grimm, “Little Red Cap”
James Thurber, “The Little Girl and the Wolf”
Italo Calvino, “The False Grandmother”
Chiang Mi, “Goldflower and the Bear”
Roald Dahl, “Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf”
“The Three Little Pigs”
Selected readings from Maria Tatar, Bruno Bettleheim, Robert Darnton
“Beauty and the Beast”
Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont,“Beauty and the Beast”
Giovanni Francesco Straparola, “The Pig King”
The Brothers Grimm, “The Frog King,” or “Iron Heinrich”
Angela Carter, “The Tiger’s Bride”
Urashima the Fisherman” (Japan)
Alexander Afanasiev, “The Frog Princess”
“The Swan Maiden” (Sweden)
Hans Christian Andersen, “The Little Mermaid” (1836) “The Little Match Girl” (1845)
Fyodor Dostoevsky, “The Boy at Christ’s Christmas Tree” (1876)
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland , 1865
C. Collodi, Pinocchio, 1883
L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, 1900
Midterm Review
Midterm examination
Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows, 1908
Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden 1911
J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan, 1911
C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe 1950
Maurice Sendak, Outside Over There, 1981
Roald Dahl, The Witches, 1983
Richard Hughes, A High Wind in Jamaica, 1929.
Conclusions, possible panel discussion, final questions and reflections for class.
Learning goals and outcomes:
The goals of this course, as with each of the courses I offer, are both tangible and intangible. I emphasize the acquisition of the skills for close reading and analysis of literary texts. Close reading, clarity of speaking, the willingness and the ability to enter into searching conversation and dialogue, and finally, the ongoing work of writing compellingly and clearly are the most practical and portable goals of my courses. The achievement of these goals—their outcome—is, of course, up to the student.
Students will also acquire a sense of the range of works of literature for and about children. They will have an opportunity to reflect upon their own childhood. How has the notion of childhood developed historically?
The intangible goals of the course are the most valuable. Often the surrender of oneself to a work of art—whether it be drama, painting, sculpture, dance, music, poetry or fiction—can profoundly and indelibly alter one’s sense of the world and of oneself. Moreover, one returns to particular favorite works of art throughout one’s life. Having an arsenal of treasured works of art prepares one for life as surely and firmly as does a grounding in math, science, or the social sciences.
Reading literature is, emphatically, an art, not a science, and in successful close reading, one gives oneself over to the exploration of the workings of another’s mind in the act of creation. The meanings one derives from close reading are replete with ambiguities and uncertainties, but that does not equate to imprecision or sloppiness. The kind of knowledge one acquires through reading literature and writing about it is both lasting and ever-changing, for it evolves along with one’s own developing aesthetic sensibility and one’s own ever-deepening experience of being alive.
If you are a student with a documented disability on record at BrandeisUniversity and wish to have a reasonable accommodation made for you in class, please see me immediately. Please know that I will respect your confidentiality in any such matter.
Selected Secondary Bibliography
Aries, Philippe, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life.
Bettleheim, Bruno,The Uses of Enchantment.
Carpenter, Humphrey and Prichard, Eds., The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature.
Locke, Richard, Critical Children: The Use of Childhood in Ten Great Novels.
Lurie, Alison,Boys and Girls Forever.
Don’t Tell the Grown-Ups: The Subversive Power of Children’s Literature.
Plotz, Judith, Romanticism and the Vocation of Childhood.
Tatar, Maria,The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales.
Off with Their Heads! Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood.
Sadler, Glenn Edward, Ed. Teaching Children’s Literature: Issues, Pedagogy, Resources.
Spufford, Francis, The Child that Books Built
Zipes, Jack, ed. The OxfordCompanion to Fairy Tales: The Western fairy tale tradition from Medieval to Modern
Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion: The Classical Genre for Children and the Process of Civilization
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