Twentieth Century Children's Literature

This module aims to explore a selection of children's fiction, poetry and picture-books, and introduce students to a wide range of twentieth-century children's literature.

It also considers different critical approaches to children's literature and addresses questions that recur throughout the MA degree: e.g. what is children's literature? How do texts relate to history and national and cultural identity? How are critical ideas about genre related to children's literature? What is the relevance of contemporaneity to ideas about children's literature and how does children's literature relate to categories of high and popular culture?

The module is divided into two parts: the first covers the period roughly from 1900 to 1950, the second part covers the period from 1950 to the present. In the first part the discussion will Graduate Centre on authors such as Kenneth Grahame, Beatrix Potter, J. M. Barrie, Frances Hodgson Burnett, A. A. Milne, E. Nesbit, and J. R. R. Tolkien. The majority of the texts studied will be British, though works by American, Australian, New Zealand and European writers (in translation) may also be included.

For the second part of the unit, students and tutors together negotiate the content of the syllabus.

This is a preliminary reading list of primary texts only. Students wishing to prepare for the course in advance are recommended to read the books mentioned in section A below.

Section A

In the first part of the course (1900-1950) tutors will lead discussion on some of the following authors and books:

Barrie, James M., Peter and Wendy
Burnett, Frances Hodgson, The Secret Garden
Garnett, Eve, The Family from One End Street
Grahame, Kenneth, The Wind in the Willows
Kipling, Rudyard, Just So Stories; Puck of Pook's Hill; Rewards and Fairies
Lewis, C. S., The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Milne, A. A., The 'Pooh' stories and the Poems
Nesbit, Edith, The Story of the Amulet;The Railway Children;The Enchanted Castle
Potter, Beatrix, The Tale of ... (various titles)
Ransome, Arthur, Swallows and Amazons
Tolkien, J. R. R., The Hobbit
White, T. H., The Sword in the Stone
Williamson, Henry, Tarka the Otter

(note: the authors and titles will vary slightly, depending in part upon which additional [options] courses are chosen)

Section B

In the second part of the course, covering the period 1950 to the present day, texts are chosen by the students and tutors together.