The Cambridge Companion to Children’s Literature Read online

  The Cambridge Companion to Children’s Literature

  Some of the most innovative and spell-binding literature has been written for young people, but only recently has academic study embraced its range and complexity. With discussions ranging from eighteenth-century moral tales to modern fantasies by J. K. Rowling and Philip Pullman, this Companion illuminates acknowledged classics and many more neglected works. Written by leading scholars from around the world, it will be essential reading for all students and scholars of children’s literature, offering original readings and new research that reflects the latest developments in the field.

  Cambridge Companions to . . .

  Authors

  Edward Albee edited by Stephen J. Bottoms

  Margaret Atwood edited by Coral Ann Howells

  W. H. Auden edited by Stan Smith

  Jane Austen edited by Edward Copeland and Juliet McMaster

  Beckett edited by John Pilling

  Aphra Behn edited by Derek Hughes and Janet Todd

  Walter Benjamin edited by David S. Ferris

  William Blake edited by Morris Eaves

  Brecht edited by Peter Thomson and Glendyr Sacks (second edition)

  The Brontës edited by Heather Glen

  Frances Burney edited by Peter Sabor

  Byron edited by Drummond Bone

  Albert Camus edited by Edward J. Hughes

  Willa Cather edited by Marilee Lindemann

  Cervantes edited by Anthony J. Cascardi

  Chaucer, second edition edited by Piero Boitani and Jill Mann

  Chekhov edited by Vera Gottlieb and Paul Allain

  Kate Chopin edited by Janet Beer

  Coleridge edited by Lucy Newlyn

  Wilkie Collins edited by Jenny Bourne Taylor

  Joseph Conrad edited by J. H. Stape

  Dante edited by Rachel Jacoff (second edition)

  Daniel Defoe edited by John Richetti

  Don DeLillo edited by John N. Duvall

  Charles Dickens edited by John O. Jordan

  Emily Dickinson edited by Wendy Martin

  John Donne edited by Achsah Guibbory

  Dostoevskii edited by W. J. Leatherbarrow

  Theodore Dreiser edited by Leonard Cassuto and Claire Virginia Eby

  John Dryden edited by Steven N. Zwicker

  W. E. B. Du Bois edited by Shamoon Zamir

  George Eliot edited by George Levine

  T. S. Eliot edited by A. David Moody

  Ralph Ellison edited by Ross Posnock

  Ralph Waldo Emerson edited by Joel Porte and Saundra Morris

  William Faulkner edited by Philip M. Weinstein

  Henry Fielding edited by Claude Rawson

  F. Scott Fitzgerald edited by Ruth Prigozy

  Flaubert edited by Timothy Unwin

  E. M. Forster edited by David Bradshaw

  Benjamin Franklin edited by Carla Mulford

  Brian Friel edited by Anthony Roche

  Robert Frost edited by Robert Faggen

  Elizabeth Gaskell edited by Jill L. Matus

  Goethe edited by Lesley Sharpe

  Günter Grass edited by Stuart Taberner

  Thomas Hardy edited by Dale Kramer

  David Hare edited by Richard Boon

  Nathaniel Hawthorne edited by Richard Millington

  Seamus Heaney edited by Bernard O’Donoghue

  Ernest Hemingway edited by Scott Donaldson

  Homer edited by Robert Fowler

  Ibsen edited by James McFarlane

  Henry James edited by Jonathan Freedman

  Samuel Johnson edited by Greg Clingham

  Ben Jonson edited by Richard Harp and Stanley Stewart

  James Joyce edited by Derek Attridge (second edition)

  Kafka edited by Julian Preece

  Keats edited by Susan J. Wolfson

  Lacan edited by Jean-Michel Rabaté

  D. H. Lawrence edited by Anne Fernihough

  Primo Levi edited by Robert Gordon

  Lucretius edited by Stuart Gillespie and Philip Hardie

  David Mamet edited by Christopher Bigsby

  Thomas Mann edited by Ritchie Robertson

  Christopher Marlowe edited by Patrick Cheney

  Herman Melville edited by Robert S. Levine

  Arthur Miller edited by Christopher Bigsby

  Milton edited by Dennis Danielson (second edition)

  Molière edited by David Bradby and Andrew Calder

  Toni Morrison edited by Justine Tally

  Nabokov edited by Julian W. Connolly

  Eugene O’Neill edited by Michael Manheim

  George Orwell edited by John Rodden

  Ovid edited by Philip Hardie

  Harold Pinter edited by Peter Raby (second edition)

  Sylvia Plath edited by Jo Gill

  Edgar Allan Poe edited by Kevin J. Hayes

  Alexander Pope edited by Pat Rogers

  Ezra Pound edited by Ira B. Nadel

  Proust edited by Richard Bales

  Pushkin edited by Andrew Kahn

  Philip Roth edited by Timothy Parrish

  Salman Rushdie edited by Abdulrazak Gurnah

  Shakespeare edited by Margareta de Grazia and Stanley Wells

  Shakespearean Comedy edited by Alexander Leggatt

  Shakespeare and Popular Culture edited by Robert Shaughnessy

  Shakespearean Tragedy edited by Claire McEachern

  Shakespeare on Film edited by Russell Jackson (second edition)

  Shakespeare on Stage edited by Stanley Wells and Sarah Stanton

  Shakespeare’s History Plays edited by Michael Hattaway

  Shakespeare’s Last Plays edited by Catherine M. S. Alexander

  Shakespeare’s Poetry edited by Patrick Cheney

  George Bernard Shaw edited by Christopher Innes

  Shelley edited by Timothy Morton

  Mary Shelley edited by Esther Schor

  Sam Shepard edited by Matthew C. Roudané

  Spenser edited by Andrew Hadfield

  Laurence Sterne edited by Thomas Keymer

  Wallace Stevens edited by John N. Serio

  Tom Stoppard edited by Katherine E. Kelly

  Harriet Beecher Stowe edited by Cindy Weinstein

  August Strindberg edited by Michael Robinson

  Jonathan Swift edited by Christopher Fox

  J. M. Synge edited by P. J. Mathews

  Henry David Thoreau edited by Joel Myerson

  Tolstoy edited by Donna Tussing Orwin

  Mark Twain edited by Forrest G. Robinson

  Virgil edited by Charles Martindale

  Voltaire edited by Nicholas Cronk

  Edith Wharton edited by Millicent Bell

  Walt Whitman edited by Ezra Greenspan

  Oscar Wilde edited by Peter Raby

  Tennessee Williams edited by Matthew C. Roudané

  August Wilson edited by Christopher Bigsby

  Mary Wollstonecraft edited by Claudia L. Johnson

  Virginia Woolf edited by Sue Roe and Susan Sellers

  Wordsworth edited by Stephen Gill

  W. B. Yeats edited by Marjorie Howes and John Kelly

  Zola edited by Brian Nelson

  Topics

  The Actress edited by Maggie B. Gale and John Stokes

  The African American Novel edited by Maryemma Graham

  The African American Slave Narrative edited by Audrey A. Fisch

  American Modernism edited by Walter Kalaidjian

  American Realism and Naturalism edited by Donald Pizer

  American Travel Writing edited by Alfred Bendixen and Judith Hamera

  A
merican Women Playwrights edited by Brenda Murphy

  Arthurian Legend edited by Elizabeth Archibald and Ad Putter

  Australian Literature edited by Elizabeth Webby

  British Romanticism edited by Stuart Curran

  British Romantic Poetry edited by James Chandler and Maureen N. McLane

  British Theatre, 1730–1830, edited by Jane Moody and Daniel O’Quinn

  Canadian Literature edited by Eva-Marie Kröller

  Children’s Literature edited by M. O. Grenby and Andrea Immel

  The Classic Russian Novel edited by Malcolm V. Jones and Robin Feuer Miller

  Contemporary Irish Poetry edited by Matthew Campbell

  Crime Fiction edited by Martin Priestman

  Early Modern Women’s Writing edited by Laura Lunger Knoppers

  The Eighteenth-Century Novel edited by John Richetti

  Eighteenth-Century Poetry edited by John Sitter

  English Literature, 1500–1600 edited by Arthur F. Kinney

  English Literature, 1650–1740 edited by Steven N. Zwicker

  English Literature, 1740–1830 edited by Thomas Keymer and Jon Mee

  English Novelists edited by Adrian Poole

  English Poetry, Donne to Marvell edited by Thomas N. Corns

  English Poets edited by Claude Rawson

  English Renaissance Drama, second edition edited by A. R. Braunmuller and Michael Hattaway

  English Restoration Theatre edited by Deborah C. Payne Fisk

  Feminist Literary Theory edited by Ellen Rooney

  Fiction in the Romantic Period edited by Richard Maxwell and Katie Trumpener

  The Fin de Siècle edited by Gail Marshall

  The French Novel: from 1800 to the Present edited by Timothy Unwin

  German Romanticism edited by Nicholas Saul

  Gothic Fiction edited by Jerrold E. Hogle

  The Greek and Roman Novel edited by Tim Whitmarsh

  Greek and Roman Theatre edited by Marianne McDonald and J. Michael Walton

  Greek Tragedy edited by P. E. Easterling

  The Harlem Renaissance edited by George Hutchinson

  The Irish Novel edited by John Wilson Foster

  The Italian Novel edited by Peter Bondanella and Andrea Ciccarelli

  Jewish American Literature edited by Hana Wirth-Nesher and Michael P. Kramer

  The Latin American Novel edited by Efraín Kristal

  The Literature of the First World War edited by Vincent Sherry

  The Literature of World War II edited by Marina MacKay

  Literature on Screen edited by Deborah Cartmell and Imelda Whelehan

  Medieval English Literature edited by Larry Scanlon

  Medieval English Theatre edited by Richard Beadle and Alan J. Fletcher (second edition)

  Medieval French Literature edited by Simon Gaunt and Sarah Kay

  Medieval Romance edited by Roberta L. Krueger

  Medieval Women’s Writing edited by Carolyn Dinshaw and David Wallace

  Modern American Culture edited by Christopher Bigsby

  Modern British Women Playwrights edited by Elaine Aston and Janelle Reinelt

  Modern French Culture edited by Nicholas Hewitt

  Modern German Culture edited by Eva Kolinsky and Wilfried van der Will

  The Modern German Novel edited by Graham Bartram

  Modern Irish Culture edited by Joe Cleary and Claire Connolly

  Modernism edited by Michael Levenson

  The Modernist Novel edited by Morag Shiach

  Modernist Poetry edited by Alex Davis and Lee M. Jenkins

  Modern Italian Culture edited by Zygmunt G. Baranski and Rebecca J. West

  Modern Latin American Culture edited by John King

  Modern Russian Culture edited by Nicholas Rzhevsky

  Modern Spanish Culture edited by David T. Gies

  Narrative edited by David Herman

  Native American Literature edited by Joy Porter and Kenneth M. Roemer

  Nineteenth-Century American Women’s Writing edited by Dale M. Bauer and Philip Gould

  Old English Literature edited by Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge

  Performance Studies edited by Tracy C. Davis

  Postcolonial Literary Studies edited by Neil Lazarus

  Postmodernism edited by Steven Connor

  Renaissance Humanism edited by Jill Kraye

  Roman Satire edited by Kirk Freudenburg

  The Spanish Novel: from 1600 to the Present edited by Harriet Turner and Adelaida López de Martínez

  Travel Writing edited by Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs

  The Twentieth-Century English Novel edited by Robert L. Caserio

  Twentieth-Century English Poetry edited by Neil Corcoran

  Twentieth-Century Irish Drama edited by Shaun Richards

  Victorian and Edwardian Theatre edited by Kerry Powell

  The Victorian Novel edited by Deirdre David

  Victorian Poetry edited by Joseph Bristow

  War Writing edited by Kate McLoughlin

  Writing of the English Revolution edited by N. H. Keeble

  The Cambridge Companion to Children’s Literature

  Edited by

  M. O. Grenby and Andrea Immel

  CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

  Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Tokyo, Dubai

  Cambridge University Press

  The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK

  Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

  www.cambridge.org

  Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521687829

  © Cambridge University Press 2009

  This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

  First published 2009

  Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

  A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-0-521-86819-8 hardback

  ISBN 978-0-521-68782-9 paperback

  Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

  Contents

  List of illustrations

  Notes on contributors

  Preface

  Chronology

  Eric J. Johnsonxvii

  Part I Contexts and Genres

  1 The origins of children’s literature

  M. O. Grenby

  2 Children’s books and constructions of childhood

  Andrea Immel

  3 The making of children’s books

  Brian Alderson

  4 Picture-book worlds and ways of seeing

  Katie Trumpener

  5 The fear of poetry

  Richard Flynn

  6 Retelling stories across time and cultures

  John Stephens

  7 Classics and canons

  Deborah Stevenson

  Part II Audiences

  8 Learning to be literate

  Lissa Paul

  9 Gender roles in children’s fiction

  Judy Simons

  10 Children’s texts and the grown-up reader

  U. C. Knoepflmacher

  11 Ideas of difference in children’s literature

  Lynne Vallone

  Part III Forms and Themes

  12 Changing families in children’s fiction

  Kimberley Reynolds

  13 Traditions of the school story

  Mavis Reimer

  14 Fantasy’s alternative geography for children

  Andrea Immel, U. C. Knoepflmacher and Julia Briggs

  15 Animal and object stories
>
  David Rudd

  16 Humour and the body in children’s literature

  Roderick McGillis

  Further reading

  Index

  Illustrations

  All illustrations reproduced by permission of the Cotsen Children’s Library, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library, except where noted.

  1. Lady Ellenor Fenn, Fables in Monosyllables. London: J. Marshall, [1783], frontispiece and title-page.

  2. Carlo Collodi, Le avventure di Pinocchio. Illustrated by Attilio Mussino. 8th edn, Florence: Marzocco, 1943, p. 62.

  3. Beatrix Potter, Peter Rabbit, front boards of the first trade edition and the privately published edition. With the permission of Frederick Warne & Co.

  4. Edward Lear, A Book of Nonsense. London: T. McLean, 1846, ‘There was an old Derry down Derry’.

  5. Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Illustrated by Joseph Schindelman. 1st edn. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964, p. 72. With permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

  6. Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Illustrated by Schindelman. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973, p. 72. Redrawn and revised text. With permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

  7. Johann Amos Comenius, Orbis sensualium pictus . . . Visible World, or Picture and Nomenclature of all the chief things in the world. London: J. Kirton, 1659, CXX ‘Societas parentalis’.

  8. Randolph Caldecott, Sing a song of sixpence. London: Frederick Warne, c. 1883. ‘Queen was in the parlour counting all her money’.

  9. Walter Crane, 1, 2, Buckle My Shoe. London: Routledge & Sons, 1867. ‘11, 12, ring the bell’.

  10. Margaret Wise Brown. Illustrated by Leonard Weisgard, The Noisy Book. New York: Scott, 1939, p. 1. ‘Then he heard the little noises’. With permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

  11. Paul O. Zelinsky, Rumpelstiltskin. New York: Dutton’s Children’s Books, 1986, pp. [35] and [36]. With permission of Dutton Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. All rights reserved.