The Child in British Literature: Literary Constructions of Childhood, Medieval to Contemporary

Front Matter....Pages i-xiii
The Child in British Literature: An Introduction....Pages 1-18
Front Matter....Pages 19-19
‘That child may doon to fadres reverence’: Children and Childhood in Middle English Literature....Pages 21-37
Shakespeare’s ‘terrible infants’?: Children in Richard III, King John, and Macbeth....Pages 38-53
Infant Poets and Child Players: The Literary Performance of Childhood in Caroline England....Pages 54-68
‘Children read for their Pleasantness’: Books for Schoolchildren in the Seventeenth Century....Pages 69-83
Front Matter....Pages 85-85
Crusoe’s Children: Robinson Crusoe and the Culture of Childhood in the Eighteenth Century....Pages 87-100
Irony and Performance: The Romantic Child....Pages 101-115
Angelic, Atavistic, Human: The Child of the Victorian Period....Pages 116-130
Degenerate ‘Innocents’: Childhood, Deviance, and Criminality in Nineteenth-Century Texts....Pages 131-145
‘She faded and drooped as a flower’: Constructing the Child in the Child-Rescue Literature of Late Victorian England....Pages 146-161
Front Matter....Pages 163-163
Unadulterated Childhood: The Child in Edwardian Fiction....Pages 165-181
‘From the Enchanted Garden to the Steps of My Father’s House’: The Dissentient Child in Early Twentieth-Century British Fiction....Pages 182-195
Baby Tuckoo among the Grown-Ups: Modernism and Childhood in the Interwar Period....Pages 196-211
The Post-War Child: Childhood in British Literature in the Wake of World War II....Pages 212-224
Shackled by Past and Parents: The Child in British Children’s Literature after 1970....Pages 225-237
Examining the Idea of Childhood: The Child in the Contemporary British Novel....Pages 238-250
Back Matter....Pages 251-266