Romanticism and Childhood: The Infantilization of British Literary Culture: 93 (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism, Series Number 93)
Cambridge University Press, 5/24/2012
EAN 9780521768146, ISBN10: 0521768144
Hardcover, 320 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
How and why childhood became so important to such a wide range of Romantic writers has long been one of the central questions of literary historical studies. Ann Wierda Rowland discovers new answers to this question in the rise of a vernacular literary tradition. In the Romantic period the child came fully into its own as the object of increasing social concern and cultural investment; at the same time, modern literary culture consolidated itself along vernacular, national lines. Romanticism and Childhood is the first study to examine the intersections of these historical developments and the first study to demonstrate that a rhetoric of infancy and childhood - the metaphors, images, figures and phrases repeatedly used to represent and conceptualize childhood - enabled Romantic writers to construct a national literary history and culture capable of embracing a wider range of literary forms.
Introduction
the infantilization of British literary culture
Part I. History of an Analogy
'For the Savage is to Ages What the Child is to Years'
1. The child is father of the man
2. Infancy, poetry and the origins of language
3. Becoming human
animal, infant and developmental literary culture in the Romantic period
Part II. Prattle and Trifles
4. Retentive ears and prattling mouths
popular antiquarianism and childhood memory
5. One child's trifle is another man's relic
popular antiquarianism and childhood
6. The layers and forms of the child's mind
Scott, Wordsworth and antiquarianism.