Children's Literature

This module will explore a range of children’s literature by an eclectic set of writers from different cultural and historical contexts, surveying the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, representing what we have come to understand as a 'golden age'. Through a series of lectures, students will read a variety of different texts, and by the end of the course, through close reading and analysis, will be able to demonstrate a knowledge of major children’s authors, identify different categories of children’s literature, and illustrate an understanding of how these works reflect key social, political and cultural issues, with a particular focus on less-obvious aspects of the texts, and some of their radical underpinnings.