Critical Children
The Use of Childhood in Ten Great Novels
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- € 32,99
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- € 32,99
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The ten novels explored in Critical Children portray children so vividly that their names are instantly recognizable. Richard Locke traces the 130-year evolution of these iconic child characters, moving from Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, and Pip in Great Expectations to Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn; from Miles and Flora in The Turn of the Screw to Peter Pan and his modern American descendant, Holden Caulfield; and finally to Lolita and Alexander Portnoy.
"It's remarkable," writes Locke, "that so many classic (or, let's say, unforgotten) English and American novels should focus on children and adolescents not as colorful minor characters but as the intense center of attention." Despite many differences of style, setting, and structure, they all enlist a particular child's story in a larger cultural narrative. In Critical Children, Locke describes the ways the children in these novels have been used to explore and evade large social, psychological, and moral problems.
Writing as an editor, teacher, critic, and essayist, Locke demonstrates the way these great novels work, how they spring to life from their details, and how they both invite and resist interpretation and provoke rereading. Locke conveys the variety and continued vitality of these books as they shift from Victorian moral allegory to New York comic psychoanalytic monologue, from a child who is an agent of redemption to one who is a narcissistic prisoner of guilt and proud rage.
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The title is meant to be taken in several ways exemplifying the multifaceted approach Locke takes in this crackling tour of 10 iconic Anglo-American fictions. All feature children caught in challenging or ambiguous circumstances, among them Oliver Twist, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Peter Pan, Holden Caulfield, Dolores Haze (aka Lolita), and Alexander Portnoy. Through these children, their creators tackle the hypocritical elements of their respective times, from the 1830s to the 1960s, and these characters, says Locke, are intended as a moral compass. Locke succeeds in giving a fresh mythic quality to the prismlike insights of Dickens, Twain, James, Barrie, Salinger, Nabokov, and Roth (with a nod to the other Roth, Henry). For the most part, the chapters flow into one another. Though a hint of the academic-survey element is detected, thankfully Locke does not feel compelled to subtract from his mission by overjustifying his slim selection of young characters caught in violent situations. His chapters on Dickens and Barrie are outstanding; and Locke may be the first to detect the effect of 17th-century scholar Sir Thomas Browne on Holden Caulfield.