Title Narratives of child neglect in romantic and Victorian culture / Galia Benziman

Published Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York, NY : Palgrave Macmillan, 2011

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Description 1 online resource (1 volume) Contents Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- Concepts of Childhood and Adult Responsibility: Locke, Rousseau, More, and Edgeworth -- Redeeming or Silencing the Child's Voice: Blake and Wordsworth -- Child Neglect as Social Vice: Trollope, Tonna, and Working-Class Subjectivity -- The Split Image of the Neglected Child: Dickens -- Aged Children and the Inevitability of Being Neglected: Hardy -- Works Cited -- Index Summary Contextualizing the popular topos of the neglected child in nineteenth-century Britain within a large variety of texts and discourses, this book isolates a strand in literary history that has not been fully examined yet, and fills a gap in literary criticism. Rereading Romantic poems, Victorian novels and social documents of the period, it challenges the largely-accepted narrative according to which the turn of the century witnessed a clear transition from a Puritan, oppressive approach to children, to a Romantic, liberating one. Narratives of Child Neglect demonstrates that these contradictory trends continued to be a shaping factor of British literature and society way into the late nineteenth century. The book demonstrates the ways in which the oppressive approach managed to survive in the subconscious of the new discourses of childhood and traces a difficulty in representing the child's subjectivity as valuable even in texts written by key figures in the formation of the Romantic cult of childhood such as Rousseau, Blake, Wordsworth, and Dickens Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Subject Children in literature. English literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism Child abuse in literature. Child rearing in literature. Children's rights in literature. Children -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century Child abuse -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century Child rearing -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century Children's rights -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 -- English. LITERARY CRITICISM -- European -- English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh. Literature. Child abuse Child abuse in literature Child rearing Child rearing in literature Children Children in literature Children's rights Children's rights in literature English literature Great Britain Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc. History Form Electronic book ISBN 9780230348837 0230348831 1283360578 9781283360579

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