ABSTRACT
How do we understand, imagine and remember childhood? In what ways do cultural representations and scientific discourses meet in their ways of portraying children?
Childhood, Literature and Science aims to answer these questions by tracing how images of childhood(s) and children in Western modernity are entangled with notions of innocence and fragility, but also with sin and evilness. Indeed, this interdisciplinary collection investigates how different child figures emerge or disappear in imaginative and social representations, in the memories of adult selves, and in expert knowledge. Questions about childhood in Western modernity, culture and science are also addressed through insightful analysis of a variety of materials from the Enlightenment age to the present day – such as fiction, life narratives, visual images, scientific texts and public writings.
Analysing childhood as a discursive construction, Childhood, Literature and Science will appeal to scholars as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in fields such as: Childhood Studies, History, Gender Studies, Cultural Studies, Literature and Sociology of the Family.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|39 pages
The Ideal and Subversive Child
chapter 2|12 pages
The naughty child in the early twentieth century
part II|38 pages
The ‘Normal’ Child
part III|56 pages
The Sick and Disabled Child
chapter 7|12 pages
Visible, audible and sentient
chapter 8|18 pages
Little patients
chapter 9|13 pages
The end of the ‘experiment’
chapter 10|12 pages
‘With special obligations’
part IV|43 pages
The Evil and Victimised Child
chapter 11|16 pages
Victim, monster, child or murderer?
chapter 13|12 pages
Between monster child and innocent baby
part V|41 pages
The Lost Child