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The precocious child in Victorian literature and culture
Paperback
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- Book Synopsis
- This book examines representations of precocity in Victorian textual culture - canonical literature, children's fiction, scientific texts, and writing by children - to argue that precocity challenges the idea of progress. It considers how practitioners of literature and science from Wordsworth to Freud represented human development, and the way in which Darwin's "non-progressive model of evolution" troubled the existing model of progression by stages (from childhood inexperience to adult maturity and understanding). Roisìn Laing argues that the precocious child undermines the equation of growth with progress, and thereby facilitates other ways of imagining both individual and species development. The idea represented by the precocious child in Victorian culture - that the adult is not necessarily an improvement on the child, the human not necessarily an improvement on the ape - still troubles us today.
- About The Author
- Roisìn Laing is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the English Studies Department and the Centre for Nineteenth Century Studies at Durham University, UK. She has published on childhood and nineteenth-century culture in several essay collections and leading journals including the journal of Victorian Culture and The Hendry James Review.
- Product Details
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- ISBN
- 9783031413841
- Format
- Paperback
- Publisher
- Palgrave Macmillan, (08 May 2025)
- Number of Pages
- 279
- Language
- English
- Dimensions
- 210 x 148 mm
- Series:
- See all books in this series
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