Posted on 01/12/2016 2:21:45 AM PST by beaversmom
Subtitle:
Their history informs fantastical myths and legends, while American tales tend to focus on moral realism.
Article:
If Harry Potter and Huckleberry Finn were each to represent British versus American children’s literature, a curious dynamic would emerge: In a literary duel for the hearts and minds of children, one is a wizard-in-training at a boarding school in the Scottish Highlands, while the other is a barefoot boy drifting down the Mississippi, beset by con artists, slave hunters, and thieves. One defeats evil with a wand, the other takes to a raft to right a social wrong. Both orphans took over the world of English-language children’s literature, but their stories unfold in noticeably different ways.
The small island of Great Britain is an undisputed powerhouse of children’s bestsellers: The Wind in the Willows, Alice in Wonderland, Winnie-the-Pooh, Peter Pan, The Hobbit, James and the Giant Peach, Harry Potter, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Significantly, all are fantasies. Meanwhile, the United States, also a major player in the field of children’s classics, deals much less in magic. Stories like Little House in the Big Woods, The Call of the Wild, Charlotte’s Web, The Yearling, Little Women, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer are more notable for their realistic portraits of day-to-day life in the towns and farmlands on the growing frontier. If British children gathered in the glow of the kitchen hearth to hear stories about magic swords and talking bears, American children sat at their mother’s knee listening to tales larded with moral messages about a world where life was hard, obedience emphasized, and Christian morality valued. Each style has its virtues, but the British approach undoubtedly yields the kinds of stories that appeal to the furthest reaches of children’s imagination.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
What is the definition of CHILDREN’s tales?
Because I never saw Little Women as a child’s tale. More like a Teen. Or Mark Twain as “children”. Elder, perhaps.
I do have one bro-in-law who speaks close to the "posh" accent. But he's university educated and worked in foreign countries. Most Brits do not have the opportunity to attend college like we have here in the States. Few go on to college.
Far more British kids than American kids drop out of school before they're 18 to get jobs. Many stop school when they reach 16 to go out and get a job.
The Grimm and Anderson tales really are frightening. I just never thought about them much.
LOL! One of the little boys in my Cub Scouts den can do an English accent, because his father is from England. We always give this boy the punch line of the skits, because his accent makes it extra funny.
I’d say the British are far more mawkish than the Americans. I love kiddie literature and tried recently to read “The Little Princess” - it was so saccharine I almost threw up. Compare that to Laura in the Little House series! Especially when the wolves are howling around the little house in the dead of night. Or when Ma refuses to explain her fear or horror of Indians. We don’t need fantasy when we have the old west!
He’s not pc and his Jungle Book is a morass of racist, bigoted, homophobic trash! (That he was a brilliant writer is beside the point.)
I don’t think you can call stories like Tolkien’s Ring trilogy or Lewis Narnia saga children’s stories. Morality tales, yes. But hardly designed for a purely juvenile audience.
And in the genre of morality tales, you would have to include among the Americans authors like Hawthorne, Crane, Irving, Melville, and even Poe. If you do, the alleged fixation with purely earthly matters on the part of American writers tends to weaken.
I remember the stories that would be created for dorm RFs at 1:00 a.m. on drunken Saturday nights in a fraternity house. Unfortunately, they, and the meaning of “RF”, are all too hilariously obscene to be posted here without getting me banned.
"With a melon?"
I think you’re right about LOTR, which was never directed at children. C.S. Lewis stated that he wrote the Narnia books for children. The American authors you mentioned were also not writing for a youth audience. (You could also have mentioned Jack London.)
Most of what students in school are (or were) forced to read was written for an adult audience that voluntarily sought out the works and paid for them.
On further thought, the author of this article may be saying not much more than, “In my opinion, the British stuff is cuter.”
Ain't it the truth. Watching shows from the UK, I often have to turn on the Closed Caption feature to understand some of those accents, other than posh or Oxford. I note that none of the Brit politicians speak with heavy whatever 'shire accents. I suspect the Brits have the same problem with some American accents.
"Not a lot of people know that!"
Just looking at his face makes me laugh. I don’t even need to hear what he is saying .
I’ve been keeping the closed caption on for NetFlix for EVERYTHING no matter the accent. I find it helps me to understand what is being presented better if I can not only hear it, but I can also read it.
Link?
Funny! He was a cutie. Long before I was aware of Monty Python, I knew him from his guest appearance(s?) on SNL.
I gathered that he was arguing that British "childrens' literature" was more ethereal, fantastic, other-worldly, whereas American literature of the same genre found its lesson in the real world, sort of that stodgy, Yankee work ethic with a halo.
I beg to differ, especially when considering the works from the authors I mentioned. And yes, you could include London, Ernest Thompson Seton, Edna Ferber, and some of the other American Naturalists but they would tend to support that thesis. I mentioned those I did because their morality tales incorporated a number of fantasy elements, from the allegorical Great White Whale in Moby Dick to the Headless Horsemen and the dancing elves from Irving's folk tales. And get me started on Poe nevermore!
Yes, I got that. That's why I said that the author, ignoring all these American works which can be considered equally "otherworldly," simply finds British types and tropes to be cuter.
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