This study examines the work of children's writers from the 19th and 20th centuries in order to expose the persuasive power of language. Looking at the work of 19th century English writers of juvenile fiction, Knowles and Malmkjaer expose the colonial and class assumptions on which the books were predicated. In the modern teen novel and the work of Roald Dahl the authors find contemporary attempts to control children within socially established frameworks. Other authors discussed include, Oscar Wilde, E. Nesbit, Lewis Carroll and C.S. Lewis.
Chapter 1 Children's literature in England;
Chapter 2 Literature as a
carrier of ideology: children's literature and control;
Chapter 3 Traditional
juvenile fiction;
Chapter 4 Today's young reader;
Chapter 5 The fairytale;
Chapter 6 Fantasy fiction;
Chapter 7 Last thoughts;
Murray Knowles lectures in Applied English Linguistics at the Centre for English Language Studies, University of Birmingham. Kirsten Malmkjxr is Assistant Director of Research at the University of Cambridge Research Centre for English and Applied Linguistics. Her previous publications include The LinguisticsEncyclopedia (Routledge, 1991).
