Exhibit:

From Didacticism to Entertainment: The Evolution of Children's Literature

Preview of images

Original Cover Art for Self-Published Version Early Peter Rabbit Plush The Further Tale of Peter Rabbit Peter Rabbit Movie Poster
Louisa May Alcott at 20 years old Bunyan, John, 1628-1688. The Pilgrim's Progress : from This World to That Which Is to Come. British Library, 1891 Frank T. Merrill, "'If I Was a Boy, We'd Run Away Together,'" for an 1880 edition of Little Women (1868, 1869), by Louisa May Alcott.
Author A. A. Milne with his son, Christopher Robin, and stuffed animal Winnie in 1926. 'The bees are getting suspicious', Chapter 1, Winnie-the-Pooh. Eeyore and Piglet "Help a horrible Heffalump!"

Part of Group:

Children's Literature: A History, Spring 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

                               "Drink Me," by John Tenniel for Lewis Carroll's Alice (1865), colorized for The Nursery Alice (1890)

The nineteenth century witnessed a gradual shift in ideologies of childhood--from sin to innocence.  The doctrine of sin dates to Eve’s eating of the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden in Genesis.  This view--dominant in the literature given to children in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries--aims to cleanse sinners of innate wickedness. Didactic texts, often called “awful example” stories, teach Christian virtues and contain tales of children making mistakes and facing consequences, often deadly ones. The doctrine of innocence, associated with Enlightenment thinkers including Jean Jacques Rousseau and Romantics like William Wordsworth, challenged the ideology of sin to advance that we are born pure with innate goodness.  A landmark text, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland  (1865)  entertains the innocent child and turns didacticism on its head in mocking pious poems by Robert Southey and Isaac Watts among others. Curious, idle Alice tumbles down a rabbit hole into a topsy turvy Wonderland world but faces no punishment.  The doctrine of childhood innocence did not simply replace the doctrine of childhood sin, however. This exhibition of British, European, American, and Canadian children’s texts and illustrations is chronologically arranged to show how, as the nineteenth and twentieth centuries progressed, literature for children evolved.  Ideologies of childhood shifted from an emphasis on sin to innocence, and children's literature, in turn, moved away from instruction to entertainment.   This exhibit is dedicated to our late classmate, Sam Sasenarine '21, who loved learning about the Victorian period and working on COVE. 

Images in this Exhibit

Didactic Strongholds in the Victorian Schoolroom: Janeway, Bunyan, Watts, and Sherwood

The ideology of childhood sin influenced literature given to children well into the early 20th century.  Lining the Victorian nursery shelves were cautionary tales written in the 17th to the 19th centuries informed by the doctrine of original sin--Adam and Eve's eating of the forbidden fruit in the Book of Genesis. Works by didactic strongholds-- James Janeway, John Bunyan, Isaac Watts, and Mary Martha Sherwood--aim to teach children to be good via an “awful example” to scare them into obedience.  Even as the ideology of childhood innocence gained prominence as the nineteenth century...
Maria Edgeworth as a Didactic Educator and Author

Maria Edgeworth, one of the most well-known didactic writers, contributed greatly to European literature, and her work is informed by the doctrine of sin.  In comparison to the other didactic strongholds found in the Victorian nursery, Edgeworth, unlike James Janeway and Mary Martha Sherwood, did not write to scare children into obedience. Edgeworth is similar to Isaac Watts in her gentle yet instructive stories that educate, thus carrying messages found in Watts's poems into fiction.   Nonetheless, she maintained a reputation as an important didactic children's writer who focused on...
The Historical Influence of Heinrich Hoffmann’s Der Struwwelpeter

Heinrich Hoffmann’s enduring appeal has established Der Struwwelpeter (1845) as a horrifying didactic text that depicts the cruel consequences of wicked behavior. Born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, in 1809, Hoffmann conforms to the early ideology of sin that treated children as little sinners. His influential children’s book endures, however, beyond the nineteenth century and is a fascinating example of evolution across language and genre throughout literary history; Der Struwwelpeter began by strictly conforming to didacticism, but over time, has turned on...
The Grimm Brothers and the Shift Between Didacticism and Entertainment

Until the mid to late 19th century, didactic texts that were meant to indoctrinate and scare children were the primary type of stories children read. In 1812, Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm published their first set of fairy tales known as Children's and Household Tales. These frightening stories were not intended for children, however they were read by them. As these tales' popularity in Germany increased, English author Edgar Taylor translated them into English. These stories became immensely popular in part because Taylor's translations made the tales more child friendly by altering...
Lewis Carroll's Poetry as Didactic Entertainment

Lewis Carroll's beloved Alice's Adventures in Wonderland  (1865) initiated a shift in children's literature from didacticism to entertainment. Carroll's use of poetry throughout his book ironically reinforces the didactic ideals of Victorian writers, while providing whimsy and humor for young readers and adults alike. Carroll places his parodies in conversations among characters and uses their reactions as a way to still enforce their value to young children as lessons to learn from. By parodying the poems of didactic writers such as Isaac Watts and Robert Southey, Carroll keeps their...
Lewis Carroll and His Groundbreaking Entertaining Children's Book

Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland  (1865) is an entertaining children's book written at a time when amusement was far from the focus of children's literature. As other authors used their literature to drill morals and harsh realities into their small readers' heads, a style informed by the "doctrine of sin," Carroll aimed to emphasize an exploration of a child's imagination. He contrasted his writing with that of the more didactically-based writers, most notably Isaac Watts, and imparted his lessons in a fun and imaginative way. Lewis Carroll was, first and foremost, a...
The Multifaceted Rudyard Kipling

An anonymous reviewer of Just So Stories notes in a 1903 issue of The Atlantic :  "It was only a century ago, as everybody remembers, that literary sucklings were nurtured on the Bible, Pilgrim's Progress, Paradise Lost, and Fox's Book of Martyrs" (The Atlantic). Didactic texts like these were given to children to instruct them and show them right from wrong. Such harsh and sometimes brutal texts are very different from the entertaining and amusing books and stories that emerged in the later nineteenth century that we read to children today.  Rudyard Kipling's ...
Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit Series and its Journey to Popularity and Commercialization
Original Cover Art for Self-Published Version Early Peter Rabbit Plush The Further Tale of Peter Rabbit Peter Rabbit Movie Poster

Born in 1866, Beatrix Potter wrote a series of entertaining children's books, all containing charming and heartwarming animals embarking on exciting journeys. Her most renowned book is Peter Rabbit (1902), which follows the story of a rambunctious young bunny getting into all sorts of trouble. These books were favorites of many children as they encouraged curiosity, playfulness, and perhaps, most importantly, portrayed adorable animals. Potter was also different from other children's books authors in that she was as involved in the business and marketing worlds as much as she was...
Louisa May Alcott's Little Women
Louisa May Alcott at 20 years old Bunyan, John, 1628-1688. The Pilgrim's Progress : from This World to That Which Is to Come. British Library, 1891 Frank T. Merrill, "'If I Was a Boy, We'd Run Away Together,'" for an 1880 edition of Little Women (1868, 1869), by Louisa May Alcott.

Louisa May Alcott was a successful American novelist during the 19th century. While Alcott penned many stories during her career, she is most fondly remembered for her novel Little Women (1868, 1869), which tells the story of the four March sisters as they come of age in Concord, Massachusetts during the Civil War. The tale of Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March has become an American classic.  Little Women is so distinctive and beloved because Alcott takes a romanticized view of childhood and combines it with the complex realities of life to create an emotional, entertaining, and thought-...
L. M. Montgomery's Shift From Didacticism to Entertainment in Anne of Green Gables

Canadian Lucy Maud Montgomery has long been considered a standout author for her contributions to children’s literature. Anne of Green Gables (1908), one of her most well-known books, is a tale that bridges the divide between traditional didacticism and entertainment for children.  With its witty morals and comforting dialogue, this classic remains alive in the hearts and minds of all of its readers. The audience follows the growth of Anne, a bright eyed and widely beloved girl, who throughout her childhood and young adulthood, faces tragedy and triumph.  Through her mishaps as...
Femininity on the Frontier: Laura Ingalls Wilder's Gender Inclusive Entertaining Texts

The Little House on the Prairie books are based on Wilder's childhood on the American frontier and follow the fictionalized Ingalls family as they move from Missouri to Kansas to Wisconsin. Her stories provide a rich and compelling contrast to the Victorian ideals of the late 19th century and instead embrace the romanticization of the frontier. Her narrative strays far from the time's notions of ideal girlhood as the Ingalls faced adventures and battles for survival, effectively establishing the piece as a turning point in gender neutral literature and marking a transition to the...
Winnie-the-Pooh Explains Milne's Post-War Struggles and Offers Comfort
Author A. A. Milne with his son, Christopher Robin, and stuffed animal Winnie in 1926. 'The bees are getting suspicious', Chapter 1, Winnie-the-Pooh. Eeyore and Piglet "Help a horrible Heffalump!"

In 1916, A. A. Milne, renowned author of Winnie-the-Pooh (1926), fought in one of the bloodiest battles of World War I: the Battle of the Somme. Milne was injured and returned home to his wife with severe PTSD. While at home, he was triggered by buzzing bees, thinking they were whizzing bullets, and popping balloons, mistaking them as cannons firing. Milne was reinvigorated by the birth of his son, Christopher Robin Milne, in 1920. However, still suffering from severe PTSD, he embarked on a journey firstly to offer a lighthearted distraction from such dark times and...
Jean de Brunhoff's "Gift" to the World

The legacy of the elephant in a green suit began as an entertaining bedtime story from two parents for their children. The tender care, delight, and leisure the story cultivates is a far cry from early didactic children's literature and represents the evolved benevolent intentions for the genre. When Cécile de Brunhoff thought up the story and Jean de Brunhoff illustrated its pictures, the two didn't plan for their gift to nurture and entertain thousands of children other than their own. But, that's exactly what it grew to do. The consequences of the proliferation of the story and its less...
Animals in Children's Literature

Animals commonly appear in entertaining and didactic texts alike. Although many of these stories focus on anthropomorphic creatures as the main characters, there are also often smaller, less noticeable animals appearing in the backgrounds of illustrations or as secondary characters. As children’s literature shifted from being didactic to entertaining, a change also appeared in the purpose of these smaller figures, sometimes not mentioned in the text at all. In entertaining texts that include lessons, such as Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit (1902), secondary animals often signify a...
The Significance of Food in Children's Literature

Food is a present theme in children’s literature throughout the centuries, often symbolized as being either a treat or a warning to its consumers. Food appears in the Bible, such as the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis, didactic texts of the nineteenth century, and twentieth-century entertaining children’s novels. The theme of food as a treat or a warning appears in many authors’ and artists' works depicted in this case; Titian, Mary Martha Sherwood, Lewis Carroll, Beatrix Potter, and Roald Dahl each address the topic in significantly different ways but with surprising...
Authority Figures Across Didactic and Entertaining Texts

Authority figures have always been present in didactic texts either in the form of parents or of God. Throughout time, as books became more about entertaining than instructional, these authority figures have seemed to disappear. For example, while the authority figure appears in the always watching eyes of God in Mary Martha Sherwood's The History of the Fairchild Family (1818, 1847),  the absence of any authority can be seen just as clearly in texts such as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865). Other stories such as Anne of Green Gables (1908) fall somewhere...
The History of Violence Throughout Children's Literature

Violence has changed in literature for children. Whereas didactic texts  of the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries scare children, entertaining texts of the mid-to-late 19 century and beyond undercut violence and mock it.  Early didactic texts were designed to reflect the ideals of the “child of sin.” This was the notion that all children were inherently sinful, and the only way to dispel this sinful child was to scare children into obedience by showing violence towards wicked or wayward children in the books given to them like Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) and The Fairchild Family...