Module: Histories & Contexts

Module Specifications.

Current Academic Year 2024 - 2025

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Date posted: September 2024

Module Title	Histories & Contexts
Module Code	EL501 (ITS) / LIT1009 (Banner)
Faculty	Humanities & Social Sciences	School	English
Module Co-ordinator	Jennifer Mooney
Module Teachers	Keith O'Sullivan, Lucy Stone, Sharon Murphy
NFQ level	9	Credit Rating	10
Pre-requisite	Not Available
Co-requisite	Not Available
Compatibles	Not Available
Incompatibles	Not Available

None

Description

This two unit module introduces students, firstly, to the ‘origins’ of children’s literature in the late 1600s/early-to-mid-1700s and, secondly, the kinds of debates that surrounded children’s literature as it evolved. Material covered in this section will include didactic works as well as imaginative and fantasy texts. A major preoccupation of this section will be to consider how such texts were crucially implicated in underpinning the social order at this time, by cultivating very particular attitudes to gender, class, and race within their readers. The expanding market in Anglophone children’s literature in the 19th century coincided with contested claims of nationalist and imperialist thought, evolutionary discourse, and revolutionary questions of gender identity, political authority, and social class. The second section of the module considers the extent to which children’s books of the period reflect, interrogate, and dramatize these cultural and political discourses – including issues of nationalism, imperialism, self-fashioning, gender identities and roles, authority and rebellion, agency and structure – by considering a range of significant works by Anglo-American and Irish writers, from Charles Kingsley to L. Frank Baum. We will examine these texts and ask: to what extent did were they merely embodiments of contemporary cultural and political anxieties, and to what extent did they open up spaces of freedom and possibility in which these anxieties could be thought anew?

Learning Outcomes

1. Demonstrate a clear understanding of the history of children’s literature from the late seventeeth century until the early 1900s.
2. Relate the emergence of children’s literature to evolving notions of the child and childhood from the late seventeeth century onwards.
3. Recognize the key characteristics of children’s literature.
4. Demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between children’s literature and the social and political discourse/preoccupations of the period(s) under discussion.

*Type*	*Hours*	*Description*
Workload	Full-time hours per semester
Lecture	22	Lecture
Independent Study	127	Assigned Independent Reading
Independent Study	101	Independent Learning
Total Workload: 250

All module information is indicative and subject to change. For further information,students are advised to refer to the University's Marks and Standards and Programme Specific Regulations at: http://www.dcu.ie/registry/examinations/index.shtml

Indicative Content and Learning Activities

Indicative Content of Seminars:
(1) Introduction (2) James Janeway, A Token for Children (1671, 1672) (3) John Newbery, A Little Pretty Pocket Book (1744) (4) Sarah Fielding,The Governess (1749) (5) Extract from Robert Paltock’s Peter Wilkins (6) William Blake, Songs of Innocence (7) Jane Austen, Selection from Juvenilia (8) Maria Edgeworth, The Parent’s Assistant (9) Mrs. S.C. Hall, Grandmamma’s Pockets (10) General Introduction (11) Charles Kingsley, The Water-Babies (1863) (12) Lewis Carroll and Little England in Alice in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871). Illustrations by John Tenniel and Arthur Rackham (13) American Girlhood: Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (1868) (14) American Boyhood: Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer (1876) (15) Race in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn (1885) (16) Childhood and Adulthood: Sarah Orne Jewett, “Lady Ferry” (1879) (17) Robert Louis Stevenson and Scottish Identity in Kidnapped (1886) (18)Oscar Wilde and Decadence in The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888)

Assessment Breakdown
Continuous Assessment	100%	Examination Weight	0%

Type	Description	% of total	Assessment Date
Course Work Breakdown
Assignment	2,500-3,000 word essay	100%	n/a

Reassessment Requirement Type
Resit arrangements are explained by the following categories: Resit category 1: A resit is available for both* components of the module. Resit category 2: No resit is available for a 100% continuous assessment module. Resit category 3: No resit is available for the continuous assessment component where there is a continuous assessment and examination element.
* ‘Both’ is used in the context of the module having a Continuous Assessment/Examination split; where the module is 100% continuous assessment, there will also be a resit of the assessment
This module is category 1

Indicative Reading List

Avery, Gillian: 1995, ‘The Beginnings of Children’s Reading to c. 1700’ in Peter Hunt ed. Children’s Literature: An Illustrated History., Oxford University Press, Oxford,
Carpenter, Humphrey: 1985, Secret Gardens, Unwin, London,
Copley and Garside, eds: 1994, The Politics of the Picturesque, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
Deane, Seamus: 1987, . ‘Irish National Character 1798-1900’, The Writer as Witness: Literature as Historical Evidence, ed. Tom Dunne, Cork University Press, Cork,
Grenby, M.O.: 2009, The Origins of Children’s Literature’ in M.O. Grenby and Andrea Immel eds. The Cambridge Companion to Children’s Literature, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,
Keenan, Celia and Mary Shine Thompson, eds: 2004, Studies in Children’s Literature 1500-2000, Four Courts Press, Dublin,
Thompson, Mary Shine and Valerie Coghlan, eds: 2007, Divided Worlds: Studies in Children’s Literature, Four Courts, Dublin,
Thompson, Mary Shine and Valerie Coghlan: 2006, Treasure Islands: Studies in Children’s Literature, Four Courts, Dublin,

Other Resources

None