Robert Louis Stevenson
"I will begin the story of my adventures with a certain morning early in the month of June, the year of grace 1751, when I took the key for the last time out of the door of my father's house." - Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped
On this day in 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped began serialization in Young Folks magazine. It was this book, along with the earlier Treasure Island (1883) and A Child's Garden of Verses (1885) where I first enjoyed reading Stevenson more than half a century ago. Along with a handful of other authors these books became the foundation of my early reading and love of books. I still have that feeling for Stevenson as I have gradually explored some of his other novels, short stories, and essays. While he is considered one of England's most popular writers of "Children's Literature", these novels and his others, especially The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, are worth exploring and enjoying as an adult.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, provoked by a dream and written in a ten-week burst during the writing of Kidnapped, is one of the outstanding examples of the use of the theme of 'the double' in literature, and a classic late Victorian text. Other examples of this theme range from Poe (William Wilson) and Dostoevsky (The Double) to moderns like Daphne du Maurier (The Scapegoat). Though Stevenson wrote prolifically and in almost every genre, his four books from the mid-1880s have become classics. They are all he would need to be remembered more than a century later. This reader continues to look back a the beginning of his reading as a boy and remember when he first encountered the adventures depicted in Kidnapped and Treasure Island.
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson. Random House, New York. 1949 (1886)
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. Random House, New York. 1949 (1883)
What's in a Childhood?
“Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Four years ago I attended a lecture by Seth Lerer, Professor of English at Stanford University, on Children's Literature presented at the Newberry Library. He discussed the literature of childhood with examples of iconic books. I was reminded of this lecture yesterday when I heard Katia Mitova, Instructor, Basic Program, the University of Chicago, discuss "What's in a Childhood?", at the First Friday Lecture presented by the University of Chicago at the Chicago Cultural Center.
In her lecture Ms. Mitova focused on six ways of looking at childhood: As a period in life; as a way of being; as an historical concept; metaphorically; ideally; and as an archetype. Briefly the period she identified as childhood was the ages of 3 years to 12 years old. It is this period of one's lifespan that is usually referred to as childhood. The question presented in the lecture was how we should look at this. As a beginning? Is it a ladder from which one falls into adolescence and adulthood, never to return? Or can life be looked at like an archipelago with islands of experience that can be visited and revisited? She discussed the concept of a goal-oriented life contrasted with a process-oriented life as one aimed at "good deed" or "good reasons", respectively, as presented in the work of Donald Woods Winnicott (Playing and Reality, 1971).
Poetic references were an important part of the lecture. For example, the concept of childhood as a "way of being" was introduced with William Wordsworth's famous poem, "My heart leaps up when I behold", which contains the ironic line "The child is father to the man". Childhood as metaphor may be seen in Alexis de Tocqueville's conception as America as a child of Europe in his work Democracy in America. Childhood as an ideal ranges from the notion of childhood innocence, Rousseau's depiction of childhood, or the questions of childhood that mimic those of philosopher of any age, such as "Why is there something rather than nothing?"
This wide-ranging lecture touched on the notion of happiness in Aristotle and Plato's discussions of play; but Ms. Mitova also referenced the ideas of Gareth Mathews as he presented in The Philosophy of Childhood. Other ideas considered the notion of the freedom of childhood and the loss of it with the onset of compliance with rules and structures during late childhood and adolescence.
Can we recapture or reexperience the outlook of a child at play? Perhaps we can, as Johan Huizinga suggests in his famous book, Homo Ludens: "The child plays in complete--we can well say, in sacred--earnest." For the adult, "The player can abandon himself body and soul to the game, and consciousness of its being 'merely' a game can be thrust into the background. The joy inextricably bound up with playing can turn not only into tension, but into elation." (pp. 18, 20-21)
Image at top from Charles Dickens Museum
Homo Ludens by Johan Huizinga. Beacon Press, 1955.
Children's Literature
Last night I attended a lecture by Seth Lerer, Professor of English at Stanford University, on Children's Literature.
He explored the iconic books, ancient and contemporary alike, that have forged a lifelong love of literature in young readers during their formative years.
His book, Children's Literature, charts the makings of the Western literary imagination from Aesop's fables to Mother Goose, from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to Peter Pan, from Where the Wild Things Are to Harry Potter. In his lively lecture Professor Lerer connected the current Newberry exhibit, Artifacts of Childhood, with his observations on the changing environments of family life and human growth, schooling and scholarship, and publishing and politics in which children found themselves changed by the books they read. The references to literature of childhood over the ages, many of which I was unaware of, were made fascinating by his witty, yet scholarly, observations. I look forward to reading his book.
Children's Literature: A Reader's History from Aesop to Harry Potter by Seth Lerer. University of Chicago Press, 2008.
