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Let Sleeping Beauties Lie (Review: Anthology of Children's Literature marks genre's end)
The Claremont Institute ^ | August 2, 2006 | Dorothea Israel Wolfson

Posted on 08/02/2006 7:39:12 PM PDT by Stoat

Let Sleeping Beauties Lie

By Dorothea Israel Wolfson

Posted August 2, 2006

This essay appeared in the Summer 2006 issue of the Claremont Review of Books. Click here to send a comment.  

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A review of The Norton Anthology of Children's Literature: The Traditions in English edited by Jack Zipes, Lissa Paul, Lynne Vallone, Peter Hunt, and Gillian Avery

 

Parents have always fretted about what to read to their children, and experts have always been ready with advice. In their educational writings, John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau together mentioned only three books worthy of a child's mind. Locke recommended Aesop's Fables and Reynard the Fox, while in Emile the tutor Jean Jacques offered his charge only Robinson Crusoe. How times have changed. The new 2,471-page, lap-crushing Norton Anthology of Children's Literature includes several hundred entries, both old and new. But far from representing an efflorescence in childhood literature, this volume marks the genre's sad end.

The editors of the anthology acknowledge in passing their debt to Locke and Rousseau—who in a sense created our modern understanding of childhood, permanently influencing all subsequent children's literature. The editors, however, wish to promote a revolution of their own: a new, more candid, and frankly, more nihilistic corpus. Despite heralding children's literature as "life-enhancing" and "life-changing," the Norton editors aim in fact to dampen children's enchantment with the world, forcing them to acquiesce to the grim realities and multicultural obsessions of contemporary adults.

Of course, this could be because the book was never meant to be read by or to children. The editors, all scholars of some sort, with backgrounds in literature, education, and history, describe their handiwork as a "more scholarly" anthology, one that incorporates "profound changes" from earlier collections, and is intended mainly for the college student. Whereas editors of previous anthologies "favored classic authors" and "canonical texts," with a minimum of reader notes and introductions, the Norton edition aims to be more inclusive of "emergent" literature. As the editors state, "Our critical perspectives, like those of scholars in other literary fields, have been greatly influenced by the research and criticism rooted in the feminist and multicultural movements." Their real hope is "to revolutionize the undergraduate curriculum."

The anthology is divided into 19 chapters covering various divisions within children's literature ("Chapbooks," "Primers and Readers," "Fairy Tales," "Classical Myths," "Legends," "Fantasy," "Verse," "Picture Books," "Books of Instruction," etc.). Each chapter begins with a long introduction in which the editors supply an overview of the genre's historical trajectory, and discuss its defining works, including many hitherto unknown. The chapters contain at least one "core" text in full, along with shorter or excerpted "satellite" texts. Each text is preceded by laborious reader notes, many of which are longer than the text itself. There is also a 32-page section of illustrations from some of the great picture books, including Beatrix Potter's Tales from Peter Rabbit, Jean de Brunhoff's The Story of Babar the Little Elephant, Marjorie Flack's Angus the Duck, Ezra Jack Keats's Snowy Day, and Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are.

The editors included some genuine classics, to be sure, some excerpted and some in full, like The New England Primer, A Child's Garden of Verses, Peter Pan, Ramona and her Father, chapbook versions of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and Defoe's Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, and the poetry of Charles Causley and Robert Graves, to name just a few. One could certainly quibble with the editors about omitted texts. Why no poetry from Emily Dickinson, for instance, or any meaningful mention of Shakespeare, whose plays were re-written into children's story form by Charles and Mary Lamb? But such quibbling is to miss the larger problem with this volume. It is not so much an anthology as a postmodernist manifesto.

 

* * *

As the editors declare in the preface, "In our choice of texts and in our introductions, we have paid close attention to…perceptions of race, class, and gender, among other topics, in shaping children's literature and childhood itself." Practically every text and every author (save for the "emergent") is subjected to a wicked scolding from the editors for its racism, sexism, and elitism. Forget about ogres, witches, monsters, and evil stepmoms; today's villains are gender stereotypes, white males, the middle class, and the traditional family. Retrograde literature must therefore be replaced by a new one, one that is, as it were, beyond good and evil: "In our postmodern age, in which absolute judgments of 'good' and 'evil' are no longer easily made, the distinction between heroes and villains is often blurred."

The editors herald this as a great advance, one they wish to promote by burying the stories under a ton of commentary. To read a children's story out of context, say the editors, is so passé (so childish?): "Discourses such as reader-response theory, poststructuralism, semiotics, feminist theory, and postcolonial theory have proven to be valuable in analyzing children's books." Thus the editors introduce Fun with Dick and Jane by noting that the "world of Dick and Jane was the idealized image of white, middle-class America." The introduction to the chapter on "Legends," which includes The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood and King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, warns that "history has generally been written by the victors and the elites, who tend to view those like themselves—white males, for the most part—as heroes."

In the chapter on "Classical Myths," the editors ponder whether myths are being "kept alive" "by unreflective adults." After all, myths are prone to "strong gender stereotyping—females are passive, males are active.... The protagonists are devoted to a ruthless elimination of the 'other' and to a savagery that is scarcely tolerated" in other children's literature. The genre of domestic fiction—which includes works like Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, and The Bobbsey Twins—"showcased white middle- or upper-class families." But the editors are happy to report that "the genre has come to reflect ethnic, racial and class diversity." Nor are they above offering advice to would-be authors: "still more change would be welcome here."

All this Sturm und Drang over children's stories is hardly new. Ever since Socrates took on Homer by banning poets from the Just City, philosophers have well understood that, as Shelley put it, "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." But to understand how we got here, we need not go back so far. There have been three revolutions in modern children's literature.

The first was instigated by John Locke. In founding a new political and intellectual order—a liberal, tolerant regime—he believed that reforming children's education was of the utmost importance. Notably, he advised against reading Scripture to children, because, as he wrote in Some Thoughts Concerning Education, the Bible was ill-suited to a "Child's capacity" and "very inconvenient for Children." Locke's aim was to take education from the hands of the clerisy, and to overcome its domineering and persecutory spirit.

Contrast Locke's sensibility with that of a contemporaneous textbook. The God-fearing New England Primer (c. 1690), included by the Norton editors, drilled children in their ABCs thus:

 

A: In Adam's Fall
We sinned all

B: Heaven to find
The Bible Mind

C: Christ crucify'd
For sinners dy'd

This was an education not simply in reading and writing, but in living and dying, one that did not condescend to the limited understandings of children. Locke rejected all this, mischievously suggesting that children learn their letters by playing dice. In the wake of Locke's reformation, a more humanistic educational literature gradually blossomed. Unlike the somber New England Primer, the stories were secular, rational, and geared towards children. Though entertaining, these stories were meant to impart a moral message, to help children grow into responsible adults. In this sense at least, Locke still had something in common with the authors of the old New England Primer.

In the late 19th century, another revolution took place, this time marked by a wholesale shift away from moralizing. A new genre of children's fantasy emerged, seeking only to entertain. One of its most prominent voices was Lewis Carroll. As the editors explain, his "mockery of instructional verse, rote learning, and moralizing school curricula helped move the genre from eighteenth-century concerns with the instruction and correction of children toward modern celebrations of play." This era is known as the "golden age" of children's literature—golden precisely because it celebrated the innocence and playfulness of childhood, and sought to free children from the grief and worry of adults. Carroll's Crocodile, a parody, "seemed to license childhood playfulness, fantasy, laughter, and even idleness." "The change was welcome," add the editors.

Alas, golden ages never last, and children's literature was no exception. The third and last great change occurred in the 1970s, when writers started to "push the boundaries" of material considered acceptable for children. According to the Norton editors, "In the wake of this revolution, writers for the young can deal with sex, violence, disease, and death—in particular because many believe that the innocence of childhood has been destroyed by the media and the commodification of childhood."

 

* * *

Indeed, it's hard nowadays to tell children's literature from adult literature. As the editors correctly observe, this is partly because the lines between childhood and adulthood have themselves become blurred. Locke thought that the "tender" minds of children should be protected from the corruptions of the adult world—and yet these are now the genre's warp and woof. "Children's literature has also begun to resemble adult literature in subject matter," write the editors, "using frank and provocative language to depict and discuss social problems such as homelessness, drug addiction, abuse, and terrorism and expanding the notion of family to include nontraditional families led by single parents, stepparents, and gay and lesbian parents."

Thus the postmodern adult world, in all its vulgar glory, is visited upon our children. The editors enthusiastically endorse Jonathan Miller's 1984 picture book The Facts of Life, which includes a "pop-up penis." Apparently, alternative families provide especially good material for young readers today. After touting the groundbreaking work Heather Has Two Mommies, and chiding Focus on the Family and the Heritage Foundation for seeing it as a threat to "what they call traditional American values," the editors assure us that "there are today no real taboos in domestic fiction for young adults, and few in books for the youngest readers. Family stories now tackle every painful issue imaginable."

Indeed, they do. Fairy tales, which have always dealt with dysfunctional families, especially wicked stepmothers, now take on a hard modern edge by tackling perhaps the last taboo, incest. The Norton Anthology contains ten versions of Little Red Riding Hood, beginning with Charles Perrault's classic and ending with Francesca Lia Block's Wolf (1998). Block, unlike Perrault, isn't satisfied with the sexual undertones and imagery of the original; her heroine is the victim of rape at the hands of her mother's boyfriend ("he held me under the crush of his putrid skanky body") whom she kills with a shotgun at her grandma's house. The editors tell us that this "story shows how a young girl can take charge of her life, while at the same time exposing the sado-masochistic ties that exist in many dysfunctional families."

Well, perhaps, but is this really a story for children? "Once upon a time" used to be a gateway to a land that was inviting precisely because it was timeless, like the stories it introduced and their ageless lessons about the human condition. But this invitation must now apparently read, "Once upon a time when women were powerless and exploited and white male hegemony ruled the world, and when the sky was dark…."

In a strange way, completely unappreciated by the anthology's editors, we have returned to the pre-Lockean age of children's literature. Locke wished to scrub stories clean of horrific images and premonitions of death—not because he was a naïf or a utopian, but because he believed it possible to build a more rational, humane world. The Norton editors break with him on this central issue. They do not believe in the possibility of a more rational world, or even, it would seem, in childhood itself. And so they have more in common with the New England Primer than they dare to admit. They, too, are obsessed with death and the apocalypse, only they don't believe in redemption.



TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Miscellaneous; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: academia; book; bookreview; books; children; childrensbooks; childrensliterature; claremont; claremontinstitute; culturewars; dorotheawolfson; fairytales; literature; moralrelativism; parenting; parents; postmodernism; wolfson
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Dorothea Israel Wolfson is a teaching fellow at Johns Hopkins University's Washington, D.C., Center for the Study of American Government.

She is a free lance writer and has been teaching courses in American Political Thought in the Hopkins program for six years. She earned her Ph.D. in political theory from Cornell University's Department of Government. A former policy analyst at Empower America, she later collaborated with William J. Bennett to write Our Sacred Honor and Our Country's Founders. Among her most recent publications is an essay on Thomas Jefferson in The Founders' Almanac (Heritage Foundation, 2001).

Government Program--Faculty biographies

1 posted on 08/02/2006 7:39:16 PM PDT by Stoat
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To: Stoat
Don't know whether to barf, cry, or just nod my head -
ping
2 posted on 08/02/2006 7:47:48 PM PDT by norton
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To: Stoat

Ironically, I thought immediately of Bennett while reading this excellent article. Thanks for posting it.


3 posted on 08/02/2006 7:49:04 PM PDT by sageb1 (This is the Final Crusade. There are only 2 sides. Pick one.)
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To: norton
Don't know whether to barf, cry, or just nod my head -
"As the editors declare in the preface, "In our choice of texts and in our introductions, we have paid close attention to…perceptions of race, class, and gender, among other topics, in shaping children's literature and childhood itself." Practically every text and every author (save for the "emergent") is subjected to a wicked scolding from the editors for its racism, sexism, and elitism. Forget about ogres, witches, monsters, and evil stepmoms; today's villains are gender stereotypes, white males, the middle class, and the traditional family. Retrograde literature must therefore be replaced by a new one, one that is, as it were, beyond good and evil: "In our postmodern age, in which absolute judgments of 'good' and 'evil' are no longer easily made, the distinction between heroes and villains is often blurred."

It is indeed heartbreaking when  there is an entire industry dedicated to destroying the innocence of childhood and of rewriting History as well as Literature.

We truly live in a Dark Age, and must protect children and our cultural heritage with zeal.


4 posted on 08/02/2006 7:54:21 PM PDT by Stoat (Rice / Coulter 2008: Smart Ladies for a Strong America)
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To: sageb1
Ironically, I thought immediately of Bennett while reading this excellent article. Thanks for posting it.

You're quite welcome and I'm delighted that you enjoyed it.  I hope that you as well as all visitors to this thread might consider forwarding the article to their friends, as it deals with issues that are absolutely essential to the future of humanity and the sort of world that is to come.

5 posted on 08/02/2006 7:56:41 PM PDT by Stoat (Rice / Coulter 2008: Smart Ladies for a Strong America)
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To: Stoat

pingage for later...and we're teaching Veritas Omnibus at home this fall, by the way...


6 posted on 08/02/2006 7:58:22 PM PDT by Oberon (As a matter of fact I DO want fries with that.)
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To: Stoat
". . . in which absolute judgments of 'good' and 'evil' are no longer easily made . . ."

Maybe for them . . .

7 posted on 08/02/2006 7:59:11 PM PDT by jeffc
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To: Oberon

A very rigourous course. Which year?


8 posted on 08/02/2006 8:22:12 PM PDT by Vor Lady
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To: Stoat
Let me guess, the Anthology omitted Little Black Sambo and Uncle Remus. The first is set in India and the second is set... um... in the briar patch. Both are excellent and enjoyable stories.
9 posted on 08/02/2006 9:34:14 PM PDT by Jemian (PAM of JT ~~ Thanks for putting our boys in harms way, Rep. Murtha, you treasonous jack@ss!)
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To: Oberon
pingage for later...and we're teaching Veritas Omnibus at home this fall, by the way...

That sounds absolutely wonderful and your children are luckier than they probably know   :-)

Full steam ahead and I wish you and your family the very best with it...I believe that it would be quite difficult for them to be served better than by the path you have chosen..

Veritas Press - classical education curriculum for Christian schools and home schools

10 posted on 08/02/2006 10:11:33 PM PDT by Stoat (Rice / Coulter 2008: Smart Ladies for a Strong America)
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To: jeffc
". . . in which absolute judgments of 'good' and 'evil' are no longer easily made . . ."

Maybe for them . . .

Fortunately, there are still some who fail to bend so easily to the winds of relativistic fashion.  It is these brave souls who will save Civilization.

11 posted on 08/02/2006 10:14:12 PM PDT by Stoat (Rice / Coulter 2008: Smart Ladies for a Strong America)
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To: Jemian
Let me guess, the Anthology omitted Little Black Sambo and Uncle Remus. The first is set in India and the second is set... um... in the briar patch. Both are excellent and enjoyable stories.

I am guessing that if they are mentioned at all, it will be in the context of using them as examples of how utterly evil, racist and depraved White America is, and how lucky the reader is that they have bought this Anthology which will put them on the Golden Path to Liberal Enlightenment.

"gag"

With the combination of so many children being essentially raised in "day care" centers and as such largely deprived of their Mother's guidance, spoon-fed Marxist ideology and propaganda in the guise of bedtime stories and subjected to Eviro-Religious, anti-American cartoons such as Captain Planet it truly gives me great cause for alarm as to the future of our Civilization.  Thank Goodness for the Homeschoolers and others who are courageously swimming against this insidious current.

12 posted on 08/02/2006 10:24:56 PM PDT by Stoat (Rice / Coulter 2008: Smart Ladies for a Strong America)
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To: Stoat; All
It's sorta off-topic, but I like the image:


13 posted on 08/03/2006 3:03:52 AM PDT by backhoe
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To: Stoat

As I get older and reflect back to the "other world" of the 50's and early 60's, I thank God that I was allowed to be a child. After that, I was allowed to become a man.

Today, there is no such childhood left from the "other world."


14 posted on 08/03/2006 4:38:52 AM PDT by DH (The government writes no bill that does not line the pockets of special interests.)
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To: Stoat

Welcome to the Brave New World of deconstruction and critical theory. Why anyone would send their children to public indoctrination centers (given a *choice*) is inexplicable. And these folks are just getting wound up.


15 posted on 08/03/2006 4:46:42 AM PDT by Freedom4US
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To: backhoe
It's sorta off-topic, but I like the image:

Not off-topic at all and highly relevant and appropriate

  :-)

 

16 posted on 08/03/2006 9:51:05 AM PDT by Stoat (Rice / Coulter 2008: Smart Ladies for a Strong America)
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To: DH
As I get older and reflect back to the "other world" of the 50's and early 60's, I thank God that I was allowed to be a child. After that, I was allowed to become a man.

Today, there is no such childhood left from the "other world."

Although I share your unhappiness with the state of our culture, I would only suggest that the ways that we go about achieving the lives that we want for ourselves and our children have changed radically.  No longer can we depend upon public schools and once-esteemed academic institutions to fulfill their charters of educating our children in the timeless truths of the ages; we must do it ourselves.  It is indeed truly sad that children can no longer be sent off to a public school with the expectation that a parent's values will be upheld and augmented (unless the parent is a moonbat) and it is very sad that most of the public media culture can similarly be counted on to actively fight the messages from saner parents.  Today we can still provide a good life and education for children through the embrace of alternative educational options and the rejection of the mainstream television media culture.  This means considerably more work and expense for parents but it is a labor that many are willing to give, as there are signs that the Left is running out of steam and there may be a day sometime soon when the children who have been properly raised can bring the goodness of Western Civilization back to the world.  The lies of Socialism and it's attendant cultural cancers can only sustain themselves for so long, as they have no solid foundations in truth and logic.  I suppose I have a marginally optimistic outlook because we are changing the media culture quite rapidly (when the President calls Peter Jennings a 'has-been' you know the end is near for the MSM) and with the changing media culture, other elements of the Left will soon follow.  It will be a long and hard road, but I don't believe that it's time yet to throw in the towel.

17 posted on 08/03/2006 10:33:27 AM PDT by Stoat (Rice / Coulter 2008: Smart Ladies for a Strong America)
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To: Stoat
The Norton editors break with him on this central issue. They do not believe in the possibility of a more rational world, or even, it would seem, in childhood itself. And so they have more in common with the New England Primer than they dare to admit. They, too, are obsessed with death and the apocalypse, only they don't believe in redemption.

They also know that propaganda works best on the most innocent.

18 posted on 08/03/2006 10:35:27 AM PDT by LexBaird ("Politically Correct" is the politically correct term for "F*cking Retarded". - Psycho Bunny)
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To: Freedom4US
Welcome to the Brave New World of deconstruction and critical theory. Why anyone would send their children to public indoctrination centers (given a *choice*) is inexplicable. And these folks are just getting wound up.

They are indeed just getting wound up, but I would also suggest that they are fighting in an ever-shrinking arena.  There are a growing number of options available to students and parents, and thanks to the New Media there is now an opportunity even for people who aren't passionate news consumers to learn of the dangers faced in schools as well as options that may be available to them.  It wasn't so very long ago that we would never even hear about the problems with books such as this Norton Anthology, but nowadays we can learn that this sort of garbage is coming before it even hits the bookstores.  I agree that things are bad, but I'm trying to keep some optimism....I'm not going to let the Left steal that from me.

19 posted on 08/03/2006 10:44:51 AM PDT by Stoat (Rice / Coulter 2008: Smart Ladies for a Strong America)
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To: Grannyx4
We're just starting in on Year 1. We've never tried classical education at home before, so it's going to be a learning experience for everyone concerned. Another homeschooling family and mine are getting together to team-teach both families' children during three evening sessions per week.

I and the other family's dad are doing Omnibus, and our wives are planning to cover the rest.

20 posted on 08/03/2006 3:33:44 PM PDT by Oberon (As a matter of fact I DO want fries with that.)
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