Module: Histories & Contexts

Latest Module Specifications

Current Academic Year 2025 - 2026

Module Title	Histories & Contexts
Module Code	LIT1009 (ITS: EL501)
Faculty	English	School	Humanities & Social Sciences
NFQ level	9	Credit Rating	10

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

Section Breakdown
CRN	10648	Part of Term	Semester 1
Coursework	0%	Examination Weight	0%
Grade Scale	40PASS	Pass Both Elements	Y
Resit Category	RC1	Best Mark	N
Module Co-ordinator	Jennifer Mooney	Module Teacher	Lucy Stone

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

Reassessment Requirement Type
Resit arrangements are explained by the following categories; RC1: A resit is available for both^* components of the module. RC2: No resit is available for a 100% coursework module. RC3: No resit is available for the coursework component where there is a coursework and summative examination element. ^* ‘Both’ is used in the context of the module having a coursework/summative examination split; where the module is 100% coursework, there will also be a resit of the assessment

Pre-requisite	None
Co-requisite	None
Compatibles	None
Incompatibles	None

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

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Indicative Reading List

Books:

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,

Articles:

Hunt, Peter: 1996, ‘Passing on the Past: The Problem of Books that are for Children and that were for Children’, Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, 21 (1996): 200-202, 27183
0: ‘The Rise of Children’s Literature Reconsidered’, Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, 26: 2 (Summer 2001): 64-73,

Other Resources

None