Cruel Children in Popular Texts and Cultures
Editors: Flegel, Monica, Parkes, Christopher (Eds.)
Free Preview- Moves beyond extreme representations of child malevolence, to examine a wider cross-section of texts encompassing sibling rivalry, bullying, and manipulation
- Presents the cruel child not simply as an adult fear, but also as an important figure in child education and culture
- Has relevance for Education, Queer Studies, Women’s Studies, Cultural Studies, and Media Studies
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- About this book
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This book explores how alarmist social discourses about 'cruel' young people fail to recognize the complexity of cruelty and the role it plays in child agency. Examining representations of cruel young people in popular texts and popular culture, the collected essays demonstrate how gender, race, and class influence who gets labeled 'cruel' and which actions are viewed as negative, aggressive, and disruptive. It shows how representations of cruel young people negotiate the violence that shadows polite society, and how narratives of cruelty and aggression are used to affirm, or to deny, young people’s agency.
- About the authors
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Monica Flegel is Associate Professor in the Department of English at Lakehead University, Canada. Her research focuses on cultural studies, specifically addressing children, animals, and pop culture and fandom. She is the author of Pets and Domesticity in Victorian Literature and Culture (2015).
Christopher Parkes is Associate Professor in the Department of English at Lakehead University, Canada. His research focuses on children’s literature. He is the author of Children’s Literature and Capitalism: Fictions of Social Mobility in Britain, 1850-1914 (Palgrave, 2012). His current research focuses on YA fiction and the end of social mobility in America.
- Table of contents (14 chapters)
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The Social Function of Child Cruelty
Pages 1-14
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“This Sport of Tormenting”: Cruel Children and Their Animals in British Literature, 1750–1800
Pages 17-40
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Innocent Cruelty and the Love of Beauty in Oscar Wilde’s Fairy Tales
Pages 41-59
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Anne Is Angry: Female Beauty and the Transformative Power of Cruelty in L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables
Pages 61-77
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Old-School Bullies at Hogwarts: The Pre-Victorian Roots of J. K. Rowling’s Depiction of Child-on-Child Violence
Pages 81-103
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Table of contents (14 chapters)
Bibliographic Information
- Bibliographic Information
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- Book Title
- Cruel Children in Popular Texts and Cultures
- Editors
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- Monica Flegel
- Christopher Parkes
- Series Title
- Critical Approaches to Children's Literature
- Copyright
- 2018
- Publisher
- Palgrave Macmillan
- Copyright Holder
- The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s)
- eBook ISBN
- 978-3-319-72275-7
- DOI
- 10.1007/978-3-319-72275-7
- Hardcover ISBN
- 978-3-319-72274-0
- Softcover ISBN
- 978-3-030-10179-4
- Edition Number
- 1
- Number of Pages
- XIII, 312
- Number of Illustrations
- 7 b/w illustrations
- Topics
