Between Me and the World: Clothes as Mediator between Self and Society in the Work of Beatrix Potter

Scott, Carole

doi:10.1353/uni.0.0309

Cited by 8 publications

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“…Posthuman studies, in particular animal studies, promote looking at fictional animals as animals, and both delineate and question the human body as opposed to the non-human body (Berger 2009). However, long before the emergence of animal studies, Carole Scott highlighted the fascinating moment in The Tale of Peter Rabbit when Peter, escaping from Mr McGregor, loses his blue jacket and runs on all four, blurring the boundary between a natural and anthropomorphic animal (Scott 1992). Many scholars have also pointed to the reverse transformation in Babar, when the elephant dons human clothes and starts walking on hind legs.…”

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Recent Trends in Children's Literature Research: Return to the Body

Nikolajeva¹

2016

Intl Research in Children's Literature

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Twenty-first-century children's literature research has witnessed a material turn in strong response to the 1990s perception of childhood and the fictional child as social constructions. Cultural theories have generated fruitful approaches to children's fiction through the lenses of gender, class, race and sexual orientation, and psychoanalytically oriented theories have explored ways of representing childhood as a projection of (adult) interiority, but the physical existence of children as represented in their fictional worlds has been obscured by constructed social and psychological hierarchies. Recent directions in literary studies, such as ecocriticism, posthumanism, disability studies and cognitive criticism, are refocusing scholarly attention on the physicality of children's bodies and the environment. This trend does not signal a return to essentialism but reflects the complexity, plurality and ambiguity of our understanding of childhood and its representation in fiction for young audiences. This article examines some current trends in international children's literature research with a particular focus on materiality.

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confidence: 99%