Children’s Literature and the Self: From Fairy Tales to Science-Fiction

3 Credits.

- You know, Hela, you’re an anxious human being. She:- I’m a human being?- Why, of course. You’re not a puppy.She pondered. After a long pause, surprised:- I’m a human being. I’m Hela. I’m a girl. I’m Polish. I’m mommy’s little daughter, I’m from Warsaw.... What a lot of things I am!Janusz Korczak, Ghetto DiaryThis course isn’t what you expect. We will tackle painful topics: orphanhood, loneliness, jealousy, death. You will learn that “Snow White expresses, more perfectly than any other fairy-tale, the idea of melancholy” (Adorno). We will also deal with parenthood, childhood, justice, and love. We will not watch any Disney films. Who is a child? “Children are not people of tomorrow; they are people today,” wrote in 1919 Janusz Korczak, pediatrician, and children’s author who believed in children’s rights. We will read folk tales, authorial fairy tales (Oscar Wilde), fantasy books (Tove Jansson’s Moomintrolls) and science-fiction (Stanislaw Lem’s Fables for Robots). We will also investigate the special connection between children and animals (Juan Rámon Jimenez, Margaret Wise Brown). Many iconic children’s literature characters, such as Peter Pan, “a Betwixt-and-Between,” Little Prince, and Pippi Longstocking, are outsiders. All along we will consider how children’s literature reflects and shapes ideas of selfhood, from archetypal to post-humanistic ones.