ENG 358 The Imagined Child
This course examines how ideas of childhood shifted radically from the middle of the eighteenth century, when it was still common to view children as small adults, to the early twentieth century. We will explore how Romantic and Victorian authors began to imagine the lives of children as separate from adults—particularly as more innocent and carefree—and how authors sought to shape cultural values and childhood identity through works about and for children. Authors considered include Hannah More, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Charles Dickens, Louisa May Alcott, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Lewis Carroll, Frances Hodgson Burnett, and Beatrix Potter.