ORCID
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9317-9174
Date of Award
2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Philosophy (Ph.D)
Department
English
First Advisor
Amy King
Second Advisor
Rachel Hollander
Third Advisor
Kathleen Lubey
Abstract
This dissertation argues that British children’s literature of the Golden Age addresses children and adults through their illustrations. It considers why the nineteenth century experienced a proliferation in fantasy and illustration, as well as why Golden Age children’s texts appeal to mixed-age audiences. Through an application of the term “cross-writing,” I argue that the Golden Age of children’s literature did not think of audiences in a binary manner, as some children’s literature scholars tend to assert. Instead, they used the dual mode of textual and visual narration to complicate the boundaries between childhood and adulthood. I also offer an original account of the properties of cross-writing and a guide to interpreting the image and text relationship in British children’s literature from the late eighteenth century to the early twentieth century. In part a book history project, I examine the evolution of illustrations in children’s books and the roots of the picturebook form in the eighteenth century. With a focus on the materiality and formal features of my selection of texts, I push the boundaries of the Golden Age by beginning with William Blake’s Songs and revealing artistic connections between Walter Crane’s picturebooks, Charles Kingsley’s The Water Babies, Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh. I reread these canonical works with attention to the ways their illustrations visualize nineteenth-century debates about childhood, science, education, and politics. I ultimately reveal how illustrations in fantastic literature invite children and adults to work as collaborators, with a recognition of the collaborative relationships between authors and illustrators and the interdependence of text and image. Lastly, I bridge the fields of art history and literature, as well as nineteenth-century literature and children’s literature, to place children’s literature at the center of the history of the illustrated book.
Recommended Citation
Montalti, Stephanie, "ILLUSTRATING THE FANTASTIC: CROSS-WRITING ILLUSTRATIONS IN BRITISH CHILDREN’S LITERATURE OF THE GOLDEN AGE" (2024). Theses and Dissertations. 772.
https://scholar.stjohns.edu/theses_dissertations/772