Narrative Theory and Children's Literature

Abstract

Narrative Theory and Children's Literature Peter Hunt But theory is not criticism. Its purpose is not to offer new or enhanced readings of works, but precisely to "explain what we all do in the act of normal reading, with unconscious felicity." Seymour Chatman 1. Why Theory? Critical theory may not seem to have much to do with children and books, but it is, as Alan Garner's Granny Reardun says of Smithing. "alack of everything" (31). Good work with children's literature depends on coherent and thoughtful criticism, and good criticism depends on coherent and thoughtful theory. It is not simply that children's literature studies should make use of all the available disciplines, nor simply, as Anita Moss puts it that "If we believe . . . that children's literature occupies a place in the traditions of all literature, we owe it to ourselves to explore what is going on in the field of literary criticism, even if we decide to reject it". (Quarterly, [Spring 1981]:25). We cannot really "decide to reject it," because in time (as happened long ago with the "new" criticism, and as is happening already with "structuralism") new theories change our habits of thought and become the norm. Theory is an uncomfortable and uncomforting thing, for by seeking to explain what we might have thought was obvious, it draws attention to some of the hidden problems of the children's literature business. We usually get along quite successfully by assuming things to be true that we really know to be quite untrue; for example: that we know how people read, and what happens when they do; that the perceptions and reactions of children and adults to books are much the same; that we know how and why stories work. Theory may not solve any of these problems directly, but it forces us to confront them. From another angle, critical theory and children's literature have an interesting relationship—for children's literature is an ideal testing ground. Unlike other forms of literature, which assume a peer-audience and a shared context of reading (and which can therefore acknowledge, but play down, the problem of how the audience receives the text) children's literature is centered on what is in effect a cross-cultural transmission. The reader, inside or outside the book, has to be a constant concern, partly because of the adults' intermediary role, and partly because whatever is implied by the text, there is even less guarantee than usual that the reader will choose (or be able) to read in the way suggested. Similarly, children's literature is a paradigm for "deconstructive" criticism: uniquely, the conditions of misreading, and the politics of power and knowledge are contained within the books and the circumstances of their production and transmission. But, most of all, children's books centre on narrative: in a sense they are about narrative—and until relatively recently, narrative has been the poor relation in both theory and criticism. The problem was, of course, summed up by E. M. Forster in 1927—and things have changed surprisingly little since then: Yes—oh dear yes—the novel tells a story. That is the highest factor common to all novels, and I wish that it were not so, that it could be something different—melody, or perception of truth, not this low atavistic form. For the more we look at the story . . . the less we shall find to admire (34). Children's books have suffered from the association or identification with narrative, and with the burgeoning of narrative theory should, perhaps, have begun to benefit. After all, one major branch of critical theory has its roots in Propp's work on folk tales, while psychological and sociological criticism uses such tales as central examples (see, for example, Bettelheim, and Zipes). (Whether or not the folk tale really has much to do with children, its 'relegation to the nursery' as Tolkien put it, is a fact of publication and marketing, if not of life) (see also LeGuin). In fact, wherever you look, there seems to be an inevitable link between children's literature and modern criticism. Theories of the developmental stage of literary response (Applebee, 124...