EDU12HCL – History of Children’s Literature Week 9 lecture 1 Fantasy Worlds © La Trobe University, David Beagley 2005

Recommended reading: Databases: Project Muse, MLA, Proquest, Expanded Academic, Ingenta Literature Resource Centre (trial database until October 31) Google: Beware! Fan sites and well meaning amateurs. Use your judgement to judge the validity, the authority and the reliability of any site you wish to use.

Classics: Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz These 3 books are classics. They are 3 of the most popular, enduring and influential stories in the whole canon of English language children’s literature. And each of them: Is a fantasy Is a journey by children Has a female central protagonist Challenge our accepted view of reality Provide an empowering view of childhood

Fantasy A mixture of the extraordinary and the probable - the adventure must be within the reach of the reader; it should be possible to believe it could happen to you. The stories all begin in reality. How do you get to: Neverland 2nd to the right then straight on till morning Wonderland Down the rabbit hole Oz Be blown there in a storm Begin in reality, move to the extraordinary, and then return the same way

Fantasy What are the Extraordinary elements that provide the balance to the probable? Neverland Flying, fairies, mermaids … all the rest are real possibilities, even if not all in the one place Wonderland Games, literature and folklore - inversion of expectations, incongruous juxtapositions Oz Conceptual and episodic communities - munchkins, Emerald City, witches and monkeys Direct derivative relation to the everyday - just tweaked a little

Journeys Girls on journeys Growing up?

Journeys Break with subservient domestic stereotype Wendy - from domestic expectation to active protagonist, then chooses own domestic role Alice - observer and questioner, but never passive audience Dorothy - active vehicle to enable others to achieve potential, as well as witch nemesis (even if accidental!) Each of them is an active and key contributor to the outcome of the story

Cosmology and Cosmography The creation of worlds, of universes The making of reality (and its own logic) Inhabiting the worlds with appropriate creatures The author’s power and responsibility The next lecture …

Views of childhood We have already established (even flogged to death) the long-standing principle of adults’ didactic perception of children’s literature. This derives from a paternal view of childhood: Children are helpless and must have decisions made for them, to direct them towards that which is proper The moral story - the fable - the triumph of good characters because of their virtue And the message is … Children! Read this and do the same!!

Views of childhood in Neverland, Wonderland and Oz What do each of these books have?  Children devoid of adults, undirected, doing the directing Fun, whimsy, breakdown of rules, gentle ridicule of adults and their worlds Children empowered, making choices, and succeeding Children reading and enjoying a story with no obvious or immediate moral Children given credit as interpretive readers A iconoclastic perception of children’s literature and a child-centred view of childhood