Handbook : Unit informationEdith Cowan University

Faculty of Education and Arts

School: Communications and Arts

This unit information may be updated and amended immediately prior to semester. To ensure you have the correct outline, please check it again at the beginning of semester.

• Unit Title

  Freedom to Play and Victorian Children

• Unit Code

  ENG3214

• Year

  2015

• Enrolment Period

  1

• Version

  1

• Credit Points

  15

• Full Year Unit

  N

• Mode of Delivery

  Online

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Description

The popular image of Victorian children is of girls in long flowing dresses with big bows in their long tresses and of boys in sailor suits. This unit goes behind this image to examine how the modern concept of childhood began to be developed in fiction from the late 18th century through the Victorian age and into the Edwardian. By using fiction and non-fiction texts students will interrogate the popular myths surrounding the Victorian child, whose image is often wrongly one of restriction.

Non Standard Timetable Requirements

Online.

Equivalent Rule

Unit was previously coded ENG3104, ENG4214

Learning Outcomes

On completion of this unit students should be able to:

1. Analyse the development of literature for and about the child from the late C18th to the Edwardian period.
2. Construct critical comparisons on ways in which different writers have treated children in their fiction and demonstrate an understanding of why such differences exist.
3. Discuss of the historical and literary context to the texts selected for study.
4. Discuss the development of children's literature is related to the intellectual, social and literary contexts of the age.

Unit Content

1. Moral education and the use of children's fiction for this purpose.
2. Novels into film: 21st century adaptations of 19th century fiction.
3. Novels of family life and the depiction of adults.
4. Social and economic changes in late 17th and 18th centuries leading to the concept of the child as a social entity and to the development of literature specifically for this new social category.
5. Victorian attitudes to the child.

Additional Learning Experience Information

Online reading and participation.

Assessment

GS1 GRADING SCHEMA 1 Used for standard coursework units

Students please note: The marks and grades received by students on assessments may be subject to further moderation. All marks and grades are to be considered provisional until endorsed by the relevant Board of Examiners.

Text References

• ^ Hodgson Burnett, F. (1911). The secret garden.
• ^ Montgomery, L.M. (1908). Anne of Green Gables.
• ^ Nesbit, E. (1906). The railway children.
• ^ Stevenson, R.L. (1883). Treasure Island.
• ^ Coolidge, S. (1873). What Katy did.
• ^ Sewell, A. (1877). Black Beauty.
• ^ Sinclair, C. (1839). The holiday house.
• ^ Martineau, H. (1841). The playfellow.
• ^ Marryat, F. (1847). The children of New Forest.
• ^ Hughes, T. (1857). Tom Brown's schooldays.
• ^ Alcott, L.M. (1868). Little women.
• ^ Dickens, C. (1838). Oliver Twist.
• McGillis, R. (2003). Children's literature and the fin de siecle. Westport CT: Greenwood Press.
• Laws, E. (2002). Miniature libraries from the children's books collection. London: Victoria and Albert Museum.
• Boone, R. (2005). Youth of darkest England: Working-class children at the heart of Victorian empire. London, UK: Routledge.
• English Heritage. (2007). Childhood (way we were). Northampton: English Heritage.
• Fergus, J. (2006). Provincial readers in eighteenth-century England. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Gargano, E. (2007). Reading Victorian schoolrooms: Childhood and education in nineteenth century fiction. London, UK: Routledge.
• Hunt, P. (2004). International companion encyclopedia of children's literature. London, UK: Routledge.
• Immel, A., & Witmore, M. (Eds.). (2006). Childhood and children's books in early modern Europe, 1550-1800. New York: Routledge.
• Lundin, A. (2004). Constructing the canon of children's literature: Beyond library walls and ivory towers. London, UK: Routledge.
• Muller, A. (Ed.). (2006). Fashioning childhood in the eighteenth century: Age and identity. Aldershot: Ashgate.
• O'Malley, A. (2003). The making of the modern child: Children's literature and childhood in the late eighteenth century. London, UK: Routledge.
• O’Sullivan, E. (2010). Historical Dictionary of Children’s Literature. Blue Summit PA: Scarecrow Press.
• Ruwe, D. (Ed.). (2005). Culturing the child 1690-1914. Lanham: Scarecrow Press.
• Styles, M., & Arizpe, E. et. al. (2006). Reading lessons from the eighteenth century: Mothers, children, texts. Lichfield: Pied Piper Publishing.
• Thiel, E. (2007). The fantasy of family: Nineteenth century children's literature and the myth of the domestic ideal. London, UK: Routledge.
• Travers, B.E. and J.F. (2008). Children’s Literature: A Developmental Perspective. Hoboken: J. Wiley and Sons.
• Tunnel, M.O. (2012). Children’s Literature, Briefly. Boston: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon Publishers.

Journal References

• Children's Literature in Education.
• Children's Literature Association Quarterly.
• Children's Literature.
• Children's Literature: An International Journal.

Website References

• International Children's Digital Library. http://www.icdlbooks.org/
• Children's Literature as a Victorian Genre. http://www.victorianweb.org/genre/childlit/index.html

^ Mandatory reference

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