Hide and seek: the child between psychoanalysis and fiction
1996; Association of College and Research Libraries; Volume: 33; Issue: 10 Linguagem: Inglês
10.5860/choice.33-5550
ISSN1943-5975
Autores Tópico(s)Themes in Literature Analysis
ResumoIn response to widespread cultural fantasies about the child--including childhood innocence, the as origin of the adult, the fetal emergence of subjectivity, and the inner child movement--Hide and Seek examines representations of the in fiction, psychoanalysis, and popular culture. Concentrating on the go-between function of the in nineteenth- and twentieth-century American and British fiction, Virginia Blum shows how selected children in the works of L. P. Hartley, Charles Dickens, Henry James, and Vladimir Nabokov were actually fictional messengers who ultimately were unsuccessful at reconciling impasses in the adult world. Throughout her book Blum draws on pop images of and fictional children, ranging from the Baby Jessica case, in which the idea of real paternity and family bonds comes to the mythic fore, to the film Home Alone, in which the abandoned becomes protector of his family's hearth and home. Hide and Seek raises provocative questions about the ways in which our culture fetishizes the idea of the at the same time that we treat with comparative indifference the conditions under which many children actually live. A work of striking originality and consistent intellectual honesty, forcing us into genuinely profound and darkly uncomfortable areas of speculation. -- James R. Kincaid, author of Child-Loving: The Erotic Child and Victorian Culture
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