Dr Monica Flegel's Books

Conceptualizing Cruelty to Children in Nineteenth-Century England

Literature, Representation, and the NSPCC

By: Dr Monica Flegel

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Conceptualizing Cruelty to Children in Nineteenth-Century England

Literature, Representation, and the NSPCC

By: Dr Monica Flegel

Moving nimbly between literary and historical texts, Monica Flegel provides a much-needed interpretive framework for understanding the specific formulation of child cruelty popularized by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) in the late nineteenth century. Flegel considers a wide range of well-known and more obscure texts from the mid-eighteenth century to the early twentieth, including philosophical writings by Locke and Rousseau, poetry by Coleridge, Blake, and Caroline Norton, works by journalists and reformers like Henry Mayhew and Mary Carpenter, and novels by Frances Trollope, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, and Arthur Morrison. Taking up crucial topics such as the linking of children with animals, the figure of the child performer, the relationship between commerce and child endangerment, and the problem of juvenile delinquency, Flegel examines the emergence of child abuse as a subject of legal and social concern in England, and its connection to earlier, primarily literary representations of endangered children. With the emergence of the NSPCC and the new crime of cruelty to children, new professions and genres, such as child protection and social casework, supplanted literary works as the authoritative voices in the definition of social ills and their cure. Flegel argues that this development had material effects on the lives of children, as well as profound implications for the role of class in representations of suffering and abused children. Combining nuanced close readings of individual texts with persuasive interpretations of their influences and limitations, Flegel's book makes a significant contribution to the history of childhood, social welfare, the family, and Victorian philanthropy.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

220

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1409475247

ISBN 13

9781409475248

British Hymn Books for Children, 1800-1900

Re-Tuning the History of Childhood

By: Dr Alisa Clapp-Itnyre

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

British Hymn Books for Children, 1800-1900

Re-Tuning the History of Childhood

By: Dr Alisa Clapp-Itnyre

Examining nineteenth-century British hymns for children, Alisa Clapp-Itnyre argues that the unique qualities of children's hymnody created a space for children's empowerment. Unlike other literature of the era, hymn books were often compilations of many writers' hymns, presenting the discerning child with a multitude of perspectives on religion and childhood. In addition, the agency afforded children as singers meant that they were actively engaged with the text, music, and pictures of their hymnals. Clapp-Itnyre charts the history of children’s hymn-book publications from early to late nineteenth century, considering major denominational movements, the importance of musical tonality as it affected the popularity of hymns to both adults and children, and children’s reformation of adult society provided by such genres as missionary and temperance hymns. While hymn books appear to distinguish 'the child' from 'the adult', intricate issues of theology and poetry - typically kept within the domain of adulthood - were purposely conveyed to those of younger years and comprehension. Ultimately, Clapp-Itnyre shows how children's hymns complicate our understanding of the child-adult binary traditionally seen to be a hallmark of Victorian society. Intersecting with major aesthetic movements of the period, from the peaking of Victorian hymnody to the Golden Age of Illustration, children’s hymn books require scholarly attention to deepen our understanding of the complex aesthetic network for children and adults. Informed by extensive archival research, British Hymn Books for Children, 1800-1900 brings this understudied genre of Victorian culture to critical light.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

520

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1472407016

ISBN 13

9781472407016

Kipling's Children's Literature

Language, Identity, and Constructions of Childhood

By: Dr Sue Walsh

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Kipling's Children's Literature

Language, Identity, and Constructions of Childhood

By: Dr Sue Walsh

Despite Kipling's popularity as an author and his standing as a politically controversial figure, much of his work has remained relatively unexamined due to its characterization as 'children's literature'. Sue Walsh challenges the apparently clear division between 'children's' and 'adult' literature, and poses important questions about how these strict categories have influenced critical work on Kipling and on literature in general. For example, why are some of Kipling's books viewed as children's literature, and what critical assumptions does this label produce? Why is it that Kim is viewed by critics as transcending attempts at categorization? Using Kipling as a case study, Walsh discusses texts such as Kim, The Jungle Books, the Just-So Stories, Puck of Pook's Hill, and Rewards and Fairies, re-evaluating earlier critical approaches and offering fresh readings of these relatively neglected works. In the process, she suggests new directions for postcolonial and childhood studies and interrogates the way biographical criticism on children's literature in particular has tended to supersede and obstruct other kinds of readings.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

190

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1409475921

ISBN 13

9781409475927

History and the Construction of the Child in Early British Children's Literature

By: Dr Jackie C Horne

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

History and the Construction of the Child in Early British Children's Literature

By: Dr Jackie C Horne

How did the 'flat' characters of eighteenth-century children's literature become 'round' by the mid-nineteenth? While previous critics have pointed to literary Romanticism for an explanation, Jackie C. Horne argues that this shift can be better understood by looking to the discipline of history. Eighteenth-century humanism believed the purpose of history was to teach private and public virtue by creating idealized readers to emulate. Eighteenth-century children's literature, with its impossibly perfect protagonists (and its equally imperfect villains) echoes history's exemplar goals. Exemplar history, however, came under increasing pressure during the period, and the resulting changes in historiographical practice - an increased need for reader engagement and the widening of history's purview to include the morals, manners, and material lives of everyday people - find their mirror in changes in fiction for children. Horne situates hitherto neglected Robinsonades, historical novels, and fictionalized histories within the cultural, social, and political contexts of the period to trace the ways in which idealized characters gradually gave way to protagonists who fostered readers' sympathetic engagement. Horne's study will be of interest to specialists in children's literature, the history of education, and book history.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

308

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1409478513

ISBN 13

9781409478515

Dickens and the Rise of Divorce

The Failed-Marriage Plot and the Novel Tradition

By: Dr Kelly Hager

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Dickens and the Rise of Divorce

The Failed-Marriage Plot and the Novel Tradition

By: Dr Kelly Hager

Questioning a literary history that, since Ian Watt's Rise of the Novel, has privileged the courtship plot, Kelly Hager proposes an equally powerful but overlooked narrative focusing on the failed marriage. Hager maps the legal history of marriage and divorce, providing crucial background as she reveals the prevalence of the failed-marriage plot in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British novels. Dickens's novels emerge as representative case studies in their preoccupations with the disintegration of marriage, the far-reaching and disastrous effects of the doctrine of coverture, and the comic, spectacular, and monstrous possibilities afforded by the failed-marriage plot. Setting his narratives alongside the writings of liberal reformers like John Stuart Mill and the seemingly conservative agendas of Caroline Norton, Eliza Lynn Linton, and Sarah Stickney Ellis, Hager also offers a more contextualized account of the competing strands of the Woman Question. In the course of her revisionist readings of Dickens's novels, Hager uncovers a Dickens who is neither the conservative agent of the patriarchy nor a novelistic Jeremy Bentham, and reveals that tipping the marriage plot on its head forces us to adjust our understanding of the complexities of Victorian proto-feminism.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

220

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1409475735

ISBN 13

9781409475736

The Orphan in Eighteenth-Century Law and Literature

Estate, Blood, and Body

By: Dr Cheryl L Nixon

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Orphan in Eighteenth-Century Law and Literature

Estate, Blood, and Body

By: Dr Cheryl L Nixon

Cheryl Nixon's book is the first to connect the eighteenth-century fictional orphan and factual orphan, emphasizing the legal concepts of estate, blood, and body. Examining novels by authors such as Eliza Haywood, Tobias Smollett, and Elizabeth Inchbald, and referencing never-before analyzed case records, Nixon reconstructs the narratives of real orphans in the British parliamentary, equity, and common law courts and compares them to the narratives of fictional orphans. The orphan's uncertain economic, familial, and bodily status creates opportunities to "plot" his or her future according to new ideologies of the social individual. Nixon demonstrates that the orphan encourages both fact and fiction to re-imagine structures of estate (property and inheritance), blood (familial origins and marriage), and body (gender and class mobility). Whereas studies of the orphan typically emphasize the poor urban foundling, Nixon focuses on the orphaned heir or heiress and his or her need to be situated in a domestic space. Arguing that the eighteenth century constructs the "valued" orphan, Nixon shows how the wealthy orphan became associated with new understandings of the individual. New archival research encompassing print and manuscript records from Parliament, Chancery, Exchequer, and King's Bench demonstrate the law's interest in the propertied orphan. The novel uses this figure to question the formulaic structures of narrative sub-genres such as the picaresque and romance and ultimately encourage the hybridization of such plots. As Nixon traces the orphan's contribution to the developing novel and developing ideology of the individual, she shows how the orphan creates factual and fictional understandings of class, family, and gender.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

312

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

140947867X

ISBN 13

9781409478676

Conceptualizing Cruelty to Children in Nineteenth-Century England

Literature, Representation, and the NSPCC

By: Dr Monica Flegel

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Conceptualizing Cruelty to Children in Nineteenth-Century England

Literature, Representation, and the NSPCC

By: Dr Monica Flegel

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

220

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1409475247

ISBN 13

9781409475248

Book's by Dr Monica Flegel

Conceptualizing Cruelty to Children in Nineteenth-Century England

Conceptualizing Cruelty to Children in Nineteenth-Century England

British Hymn Books for Children, 1800-1900

British Hymn Books for Children, 1800-1900

Kipling's Children's Literature

Kipling's Children's Literature

History and the Construction of the Child in Early British Children's Literature

History and the Construction of the Child in Early British Children's Literature

Dickens and the Rise of Divorce

Dickens and the Rise of Divorce

The Orphan in Eighteenth-Century Law and Literature

The Orphan in Eighteenth-Century Law and Literature

Conceptualizing Cruelty to Children in Nineteenth-Century England

Conceptualizing Cruelty to Children in Nineteenth-Century England

Username

Password

Username

Password

Password again

Birthday

Email