1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910148757203321

Autore

Phillips Michelle H

Titolo

Representations of Childhood in American Modernism [[electronic resource] /] / by Michelle H. Phillips

Pubbl/distr/stampa

London : , : Palgrave Macmillan UK : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2016

ISBN

1-137-50807-8

Edizione

[1st ed. 2016.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (IX, 234 p. 10 illus., 1 illus. in color.)

Disciplina

809.7

Soggetti

America—Literatures

Literature, Modern—20th century

United States—History

Social history

North American Literature

Twentieth-Century Literature

US History

Social History

United States History

America Literatures

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction -- American Modernism, Childhood, and The Inward Turn -- The “Partagé Child” And The Emergence of The Modernist Novel in What Maisie Knew -- An Innocence Worse Than Evil in The Turn of The Screw -- Nightwood: A Bedtime Story -- The Children of Double Consciousness: From The Souls of Black Folk to The Brownies’ Book -- Drowning In Childhood: Gertrude Stein’s Late Modernism -- Works Cited .

Sommario/riassunto

This book documents American modernism’s efforts to disenchant adult and child readers alike of the essentialist view of childhood as redemptive, originary, and universal. For James, Barnes, Du Bois, and Stein, the twentieth century’s move to position the child at the center of the self and society raised concerns about the shrinking value of maturity and prompted a critical response that imagined childhood and



children’s narratives in ways virtually antagonistic to both. In this original study, Michelle H. Phillips argues that American modernism’s widespread critique of childhood led to some of the period’s most meaningful and most misunderstood experiments with interiority, narration, and children’s literature.