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[SPRING 2007]
ENGL W3770y Children's Literature:
How Imagination Grows
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Prof.
Karl Kroeber
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Although organized to illuminate the brief
history of "children's literature" and its influence
on adult literary works, the course's primary aim is to
understand the mental processes of imagining, especially
how they evolve and are advanced or retarded by specific
educational and cultural practices. Focusing on "classical"
texts that have appealed to both adults and children,
and utilizing recent the psychological and neurological
findings about how the imagination matures, the course
seeks to identify what personal and social values fantasy
literature may foster or imperil. Specific questions which
this search will raise include: why fantasy normally takes
a narrative form, how imagining and emotion may interconnect
and how they are related to belief, and the ways in which
imaginative processes may encourage escape from or deeper
engagement with natural and social realities in both mature
and immature readers.
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REQUIREMENTS
Most lecture-discussion sessions will be built around
written assignments of very short papers responding to
a specific question concerning imaginative processes raised
by a particular text; cogent participation in discussions
focused by these assignments will determine 60% of the
grade for the course, with final and midterm examinations
determining the other 40%.
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TENTATIVE SYLLABUS
(Asterisks indicate required readings)
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| WEEK 1: |
What are children? Why
should literature for children matter to adults? Make
believe mature and immature. Lesson of The Odyssey.
Imagining and storytelling; the invention of childhood;
Robinson Crusoe, The Swiss Family Robinson
and modern education. |
| WEEK 2: |
The counter-Enlightenment's
psychological revolution; art as experience; Wordsworth
lyrics*; Keats and the re-imagining of maturity. |
| WEEK 3: |
Naturalism; animals and
people, TheTale of Peter Rabbit*; The Wind in
the Willows*; Winnie the Pooh and The House at
Pooh Corner* |
| WEEK 4: |
American developments:
Uncle Remus; Ernest Thompson Seton; The Wizard
of Oz; The Little House on the Prairie* |
| WEEK 5: |
Fairy tales - beyond
folklore: "Cinderella"*; "The Frog Prince*";
"The Juniper Tree*"; "The White Snake*;
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| WEEK 6: |
The modern fairy tale:
Hans Christian Anderson, "The Little Match Girl"*'
"The Steadfast Tin Soldier"*; Alice in Wonderland
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| WEEK 7: |
Modern culture and exploitation
of children: imagination as revolution; Blake's Songs
of Innocence and Experience* |
| WEEK 8: |
Adventure stories and
the expansion of make believe; Treasure Island* |
| WEEK 9: |
Sexuality and perils
of imaginative adventure; the infantilizing of modern
culture; Peter Pan*; The Lone Ranger, Superhero
comics |
| WEEK 10: |
Colonialism, children,
and the adventurous imagination; Kim* |
| WEEK 11: |
Kim*; fantasized
history: The Lord of the Rings |
| WEEK 12: |
Historical fantasy -
The Once and Future King* |
| WEEKS 13 & 14: |
Science fiction, religion,
and the future of imagining: His Dark Materials* |
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