The Natural History of Make-Believe: A Guide to the Principal Works of Britain, Europe, and America
Book information
Description
The Man in the Moon has dropped down to earth for a visit. Over the hedge, a rabbit in trousers is having a pipe with his evening paper. Elsewhere, Alice is passing through a looking glass, Dorothy riding a tornado to Oz, and Jack climbing a beanstalk to heaven. To enter the world of children's literature is to journey to a realm where the miraculous and the mundane exist side by side, a world that is at once recognizable and real--and enchanted.Many books have probed the myths and meanings of children's stories, but Goldthwaite's Natural History is the first exclusively to survey the magic that lies at the heart of the literature. From the dish that ran away with the spoon to the antics of Brer Rabbit and Dr. Seuss's Cat in the Hat, Goldthwaite celebrates the craft, the invention, and the inspired silliness that fix these tales in our minds from childhood and leave us in a state of wondering to know how these things can be. Covering the three centuries from the fairy tales of Charles Perrault to Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, he gathers together all the major imaginative works of America, Britain, and Europe to show how the nursery rhyme, the fairy tale, and the beast fable have evolved into modern nonsense verse and fantasy. Throughout, he sheds important new light on such stock characters as the fool and the fairy godmother and on the sources of authors as diverse as Carlo Collodi, Lewis Carroll, and Beatrix Potter. His bold claims will inspire some readers and outrage others. He hails Pinocchio, for example, as the greatest of all children's books, but he views C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia as a parable that is not only murderously misogynistic, but deeply blasphemous as well.Fresh, incisive, and utterly original, this rich literary history will be required reading for anyone who cares about children's books and their enduring influence on how we come to see the world.
Similar books
MySQL® Notes for Professionals book
2018 · PDF
MrExcel 2022: Boosting Excel
2022 · PDF
MrExcel 2022: Boosting Excel
2022 · PDF
Session C11: Ancient Cultural Landscapes in South Europe – their Ecological Setting and Evolution, Session C22: Gardeners from South America, Session S04: Agro-Pastoralism and Early Metallurgy Sessions, Session WS29: The Idea of Enclosure in Recent Iberian Prehistory, Session C88: Rhytmes et causalites des dynamiques de l'anthropisation en Europe entre 6500 ET 500 BC: Hypotheses socio-culturelles et/ou climatiques: Proceedings of the XV UISPP World Congress (Lisbon 4-9 September 2006) / Actes du XV Congrès Mondial (Lisbonne 4-9 Septembre 2006) Vol.36
2010 · PDF
THE BRITISH ARMY IN INDIA: ITS PRESERVATION BY AN APPROPRIATE CLOTHING, HOUSING, LOCATING, RECREATIVE EMPLOYMENT, AND HOPEFUL ENCOURAGEMENT OF THE TROOPS. with AN APPENDIX ON INDIA : THE CLIMATE OP ITS HILLS ; THE DEVELOPMENT OF ITS RESODRCBS, INDUSTRY, AND ARTS ; THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE ; THE BLACK ACT ; THE PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY ; THE TRAFFIC IN OPIUM ; THE VALUE OF INDIA ; PERMANENT CAUSES OF DISAFFECTION, AND OF THE RECENT REBELLION ; THE TRADITIONARY POLICY; MISGOVERNMENT BY NATIVE RULERS ; ANNEXATIONS OF THEIR TERRITORY, ETC.
1858 · PDF
Idries Shah 27 Books Collection : A Perfumed Scorpion, A Veiled Gazelle, Caravan of Dreams, Darkest England, Destination Mecca, Evenings with Idries Shah, Knowing How to Know, Learning How to Learn, Letters and Lectures of Idries Shah, Neglected aspects of Sufi study, Observations, Oriental Magic, Reflections, Seeker after Truth, Special Illumination, Special Problems in the study of Sufi ideas, Sufi thought and action, Tales of the Dervishes, The Dermis Probe, The Elephant in the Dark, The Englishman Handbook, Idries Shah Antology, The Magic Monastery, The natives are restless, wisdom of the Idiots PDF.
2022 · PDF
The travels of Capts. Lewis and Clarke from St. Louis, by way of the Missouri and Columbia rivers, to the Pacific ocean; performed in the years 1804, 1805 & 1806, by order of the government of the United States. Containing delineations of the manners, customs, religion, &c. of the Indians, comp. from various authentic sources, and original documents, and a summary of the Statistical view of the Indian nations, from the official communication of Meriwether Lewis. Illustrated with a map of the country, inhabited by the western tribes of Indians
1809 · PDF
Professional Linux kernel architecture ''Wrox programmer to programmer''--Cover. - ''What you are reading right now is the result of an evolution over more than seven years: After two years of writing, the first edition was published in German by Carl Hanser Verlag in 2003. It then described kernel 2.6.0. The test was used as a basis for the low-level design documentation for the EAL4+ security evaluation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, requiring to update it to kernel 2.6.18 (if the EAL acronym does not mean anything to you, then Wikipedia is once more your friend). Hewlett-Packard sponsored the translation into English and has, thankfully, granted the rights to publish the result. Updates to kernel 2.6.24 were then performed specifically for this book''--P. ix
2008 · PDF