About The Class
The class began the semester by reading Western Attitudes Toward Death, in which Philippe Aries notes that both the individual dread of death and the desire to keep children ignorant of death are relatively recent phenomena. It was not until the eighteenth century that adults started to shelter children from the moment of death, and the desire to keep children ignorant of death entirely is a nineteenth- and twentieth-century impulse. Aries labels this most recent attitude towards death "Forbidden Death." As death became forbidden and denied, childhood became precious and sentimentalized. Thus, childhood and death came to occupy almost completely separate ideological spheres.
Of course, children still come into contact with death and dying, and children's literature is one site where we find this intersection of childhood and death. Archival children's literature especially captures both
childhood and death as the archive, literally and figuratively, contains the dust of the dead. This class was designed to invite students into the children's literature archive as a space to explore the tensions, nuances, and meanings of childhood and death.
Throughout the course of the semester, we supplemented Aries' argument with scholarship on childhood, archives, adult-child power dynamics, and the psychology of death and ghosts. We sampled a variety of relevant primary texts from the Baldwin Archives, including fairy tales, Puritan primers, nursery rhymes, golden-age classics, and young-adult problem novels. Students also each selected their own relevant text from the Baldwin to read and present to the class. This colllection is the final project in the course and, as such, it demonstrates the results of our semester-long reflection on the representation and significance of death in the children's literature archive.
Class Readings
Children's Literature from the Baldwin Collection
Andersen, Hans Christian. "The Angel;" "The Little Match Girl;" "The Little Mermaid."
Barrie, J.M. Peter and Wendy.
Grimm, Jacob and Wilhem. "Little Snow White; "The Child's Grave;" "The Godfather Death;" "The Juniper Tree."
Gorey, Edward. The Gashlycrumb Tinies.
Hoffmann, Heinrich. Der Struwwelpeter.
Janeway, James. A Token for Children.
Lowry, Lois. A Summer to Die.
The New England Primer.
Twain, Mark. "The Story of the Bad Little Boy;" "The Story of the Good Little Boy"
Secondary Scholarship
Aries, Philippe. Western Attitudes toward Death from the Middle Ages to the Present.
Faivre, Celine-Albin, “The Legacy of the Phantoms, or Death as a Ghost-Writer in Peter and Wendy.”
Kidd, Kenneth. “The Child, The Scholar, and The Children’s Literature Archive.”
Pyles, Marian. Death and Dying in Children’s and Young People’s Literature.
Stallcup, Jackie. "Power, Fear, and Children's Picture Books."
Stannard, David. The Puritan Way of Death.
Steedman, Carolyn. Dust.
Tatar, Maria. “Sex and Violence: The Hard Core of Fairy Tales.”
Wiseman, Angela. “Summer’s End and Sad Goodbyes: Children’s Picture Books About Death and Dying.”
Individual Reading Selections
Andersen, Hans Christian. "Bluebeard" and "The Child in the Grave."
"Babes in the Wood."
Brosgol, Vera. Anya's Ghost.
Edelston, R. The Immortal Fountain.
Foley, Louise Munro. Forest of Fear.
Fowles, Zachariah. The Prodigal Daughter.
Griffin, John. The Memoir of Dinah Doudney.
Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm. "The Robber Bridegroom" and "The Twelve Brothers."
Gorey, Edward. The Amphigorey and The Dwindling Party.
Hendley, George. A Memorial for Sabbath (Sunday) School Boys.
Hirsh, Marilyn. Deborah the Dybbuk: A Ghost Story.
Holleyman, Sonia. Little Vampire's Diary.
Lunde, Stein Erik. My Father's Arms are a Boat.
Packard, Edward. Space Vampire.
Sabin, Ellen. The Healing Book.
Sabuda, Robert. Peter Pan.
Sanford, Doris. It Must Hurt a Lot.
Stine, R.L. Stay Out of the Basement.
Thomas, Isaiah. The Brother's Gift, or the Naughty Girl Reformed and Vice in its Proper Shape.
Warburg, Sandol. Growing Time.