Childhood and Adolescence in American Literature and Culture

A survey of how changing ideas of childhood and the "new" construction of the category of adolescence are mirrored in American fiction and poetry from the Puritans to the present. Among the writers considered are Anne Bradstreet, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, Henry James, and J. D. Salinger. Provides a comparative cultural perspective by studying works by Wordsworth, Dickens, Pater, and Kosinski.