English Fiction & Prose Literature - General & Miscellaneous - Literary Criticism, Literary Criticism - General & Miscellaneous, 19th Century British History - Victorian Era (1837-1901), Europe - Civilization, English Fiction & Prose Literature - 19th Cen
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Overview
The question "What is a child?" is at the heart of the world the Victorians made. In Child-Loving, James Kincaid writes a fresh chapter in the history of the Victorian era. Dealing with one of the most intimate and troubling notions of the modern period - how the Victorians (and we, their descendants) - imagine children within the continuum of human sexuality, Kincaid's work compels us to consider just how we love the children we love. Throughout the nineteenth century, the child developed as a symbol of purity, innocence, asexuality - the angelic child perhaps not wholly real. Yet the child could also be a figure of fantasy, obsession, suppressed desires. Think of Lewis Carroll's Alice (or, a few years later, James Barrie's Peter Pan). The image of the child as both pure and strangely erotic is part of the mythology of Victorian culture. And so, Kincaid argues, the Victorians viewed children in ways that seem to us now complex and perhaps bizarre. But do we fare much better today? Contemporary society sees children at risk, in need of protection from pedophiles. Yet as our culture recoils from the horror of child molestation, we offer children's bodies as spectacle in the media and advertising, giving children the erotic attention we wish to deny. Built on a decade of research into literary, medical, cultural, and legal materials, Child-Loving traces for the first time the growth of our conceptions of the body, the child, and sexuality, and the stories we tell about them.Editorials
Library Journal
Why are we obsessed by stories of child molesting by strangers or child care workers, despite the evidence that such events are very rare? The author (English, Univ. of Southern California) offers startling views on this and other issues concerning child sexuality. His material spans a number of disciplines, including 19th-century literature and child care books, modern social history, court transcripts, and sex manuals. While the book suffers from a surfeit of deconstuctionist verbiage, the author's wide-ranging scholarship and provocative ideas more than make up for the shortcomings. Recommended for most academic and research libraries and for larger public libraries that collect academic material for educated lay readers.-- Mary Ann Hughes, Washington State Univ. Libs., PullmanBook Details
Published
June 30, 1994
Publisher
New York, NY : Routledge, 1994.
Pages
416
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780415910033