Children’s Literature
Term 2
MWF, 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Much fantasy literature for children focuses on a child or adolescent’s quest to gain ascendancy in the battle between good and evil. The literature we will explore in this course relies on British and European national myths of adventure, religion and selfhood. As we examine these quest narratives by Tolkien, Pullman and others, we will trace the ways in which patterns and continuities of history and memory, the force of nostalgia in creating an idealized past, and the reliance on an assumed framework of common cultural community combine to form potent ideological perspectives about nationhood, which are both maintained and challenged by the authors we will study.
