Literature for Young People

Undergraduate

This course considers literature for children and young adults both historically and as a living literary field that continues to have an important place in young people’s experience and development. Among the questions we explore are: the varieties of functions of books for young people (didactic, instructive, imaginative, subversive); the historical conditions under which literature specifically for children first emerged in England; its development and shifting nature in the 19th and 20th centuries; the prominent place of visual imagines in many works of for children and young adults, alongside their frequent emphasis on pleasurable plays of sound; the role of children’s literature in cultural exclusion or inclusion; the current movement to keep many books from young readers through “book bans.” Throughout, we also consider what concepts of “childhood” and “children” both underlie these works and are conveyed by them. Possible primary texts include works by early children’s writers Maria Edgeworth and Anna Barbauld; Alice in Wonderland; Lord of the Flies; Charlotte’s Web; Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry; Little House on the Prairie and The Birchbark House; and selected picture books and graphic novels. Prerequisites: At least one prior Yale College course in English or a relevant program or department. HU MW 11:35am-12:50pm