Department of English

This course will explore great moments in the construction of childhood, beginning with Wordsworth and Mary Shelley and including works by Emily Bronte, Dickens, Carroll, Stevenson, Pater, and Kiplings The Jungle Books. Supplementary readings from Kincaid, Aries, Freud, and Derrida. This will not be a children's literature course but rather a course which examines the concept of the child as it is constructed and contested by literary (and other forms) of discourse during the long 19th century (1780 to 1914). Topics to be considered include: Romantic Melancholy, the Problem of Origination, Childhood Sexuality, Bildung and Criminality, and Post Darwinian child.