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Literature after the second world war
Post world war 2 literature
Literature after the second world war
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In 1910, “after reading Norman Angell's book The Great Illusion, Alan committed himself to pacifism, a cause that he served the rest of his life” (Wheeler). Even before this, Milne’s personality tended to lean in this direction; as exhibited in his childhood, a fundamental characteristic of Milne’s was his hatred of violence and aggression. He also had a strong sense of Puritanism, “partly natural, partly imposed by his Victorian upbringing” (Wheeler). These tendencies affected all of his writing, including the Pooh books, for many of his works carry light-hearted and innocent sense, but also an overwhelming sense of moral justice.
Ironically, it would be Milne’s peace-loving nature that led him to contribute to the war effort. Despite his anti-war sentiment, on the outbreak of World War I, Milne enlisted in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment and served in France (“Alan Alexander Milne, Author”). He had acknowledged, “I was a pacifist before 1914, but this (I thought with other fools) was a war to end war” (Autobiography). He had hoped naively by fighting in the war, he would help to end war forever, an achievement he, as a pacifist, aspired toward. Milne was sent to the “Southern Command Signaling School at Wyke Regis for a nine-week course, after which he became a signaling officer” (Milne, J.). The life of a signaling officer was a relatively safe one, even so Milne saw more than enough death and destruction. When he left the front lines on November 8, 1916, owing to a fever he contracted, he returned to England and was put in charge of a company at a signaling school at Fort Southwick; he stayed there until he was released from the army on February 14, 1919 (Milne, J.). Milne had said after he was released, “[I]t makes me almo...
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...ini Page. Jan 2012. The Orange
County Register. Print.
Dewan, Pauline. “The Toy Genre, Winnie-the-Pooh.” Children’s Literature Classics. Feb 18
2014. Web. 19 Mar 2014.
Ensor, Josie. “Agony of AA Milne.” The Telegraph. 24 Apr 2013. Telegraph Media Group.
Web. 10 Feb 2014.
Milne, Alan Alexander. It’s Too Late Now: Autobiography of a Writer. Curtis Brown Group Ltd.
1939. The Weald. Web. 9 Mar 2014.
Milne, James. “The Author.” The Page at Pooh Corner. 6 May 2010. Web. 26 Mar 2014.
“Pooh’s Story.” Pooh Corner. Trustees of the Pooh Properties Trust. 1999-2014. Web. 6 Feb
2014.
Thwaite, Ann. A.A. Milne: The Man Behind Winnie-the-Pooh. Random House, 1990. Print.
Wheeler, John. “Who was Alan Alexander Milne?”. Johanan Rakkav. 22 Oct 2013. Web.
26 Mar 2014.
“Winnie-the-Pooh and AA Milne Too.” Legends and Legacies. 31 Jan 2011. Web. 26 Mar 2014
Perkins, George B., and Barbara Perkins. "The Beast in the Jungle." The American Tradition in Literature (concise). 12th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2009. 1148-1177. Print.
Through over forty-two books Dr. Seuss has been able to encourage children to seek delight in reading and has opened the minds of successive generations. He designed books that inspire children to learn through entertainment, by providing according to Steven Brezzo, Director of the San Diego Museum of Art, "a fantastic refuge of wacky characters, convoluted logic, and silly vocabulary." The accomplishments of Dr. Seuss are far-ranging: not only did he resurrect the pleasure of reading for children, and inspire them to think creatively, but he taught many a moral lesson to us during what researchers have discovered are our most formative years. We have learned tolerance and consideration, individuality and compromise, and even morality concerning the ideology of nuclear armament(The Butter Battle Book, 1984) and materialistic society's effect upon the natural world(The Lorax, 1971). These lessons were often taught subtly, subconsciously embracing our young psyche, for as children Dr. Seuss was primarily a wonderful synonym for fanciful adventures that showed us a life we could create beyond reality, where having fun was paramount. For many ...
Hollindale, P. (2009) ‘A Hundred Years of Peter Pan’ in Montgomery, H, and Watson, N. J. (eds) Children’s Literature: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 153-164.
Though more than one century has passed, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland still new generations of young and older readers alike. Among many other reasons, Carroll’s tale may be explained by its particular work on language and the mass effects it produces in the mind of children and adults, therefore creating a remarkable literary work.
When reminiscing on past memories of favorite books, cartoons, songs and stuffed animals, many people will think about Winnie the Pooh. The man behind all of your fun filled childhood adventured with Christopher Robin and his bear friend Pooh is Alan Alexander Milne, more commonly known as A. A. Milne. Besides his creation of Winnie the Pooh short story and poetry books he was a very accomplished man through out his whole life. He showed great affection to family members, friends, and to his wife and child. He was also dedicated to his work and set his mind to whatever task he was facing.
Symons, Julian. “Criticism by Julian Symons.” DISCovering Authors. 2003. Discovering Collection. Gale. Markham Public Libraries (CELPLO). 31 Mar. 2009 .
Richard Robinson, the President and CEO of Scholastic Inc., the world’s largest publisher and distributor of children’s books, said that a great children’s text contains a simple and original idea, is written with humour and makes the world more interesting. Despite being published in 1928, A.A. Milne’s The House At Pooh Corner remains a highly effective children’s text. The text meets the criteria set out by Richard Robinson and it has been able to do so through its good uses of literary elements such as style, themes and characters. Some examples of this can be linked to the works of various developmental theorists such as Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky and Erik Erikson.
Damrosch, David, et al., ed. The Longman Anthology of British Literature: Vol. B. Compact ed. New York: Longman - Addison Wesley Longman, 2000. p. 2256
Damrosch, David, et al., ed. The Longman Anthology of British Literature: Vol. B. Compact ed. New York: Longman - Addison Wesley Longman, 2000.
Abrams, M.H., ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th ed. Vol. 2. New York: Norton, 1993.
The Tale of Peter Rabbit and Voices in the Park were published at either end of the twentieth century, a period which witnessed the creation of the modern picturebook for children. They are both extremely prestigious examples of picturebooks of their type, the one very traditional, the other surrealist and postmodern. The definition of ‘picturebook’ used here is Bader’s: ‘an art form [which] hinges on the interdependence of pictures and words, on the simultaneous display of two facing pages, and on the drama of the turning of the page’ (Bader, quoted in Montgomery, 2009, p. 211). In contrast with a simple illustrated book, the picturebook can use all of the technology available to it to produce an indistinguishable whole, the meaning and value of which is dependent on the interplay between all or any of these aspects. Moebius’s claim that they can ‘portray the intangible and invisible[…], ideas that escape easy definition in pictures or words’ is particularly relevant to these two works. Potter’s book is, beneath its didactic Victorian narrative, remarkably subtle and subversive in its attitudes towards childhood, and its message to its child readers. Browne’s Voices in the Park, on the other hand, dispenses with any textual narrative; by his use of the devices of postmodernism, visual intertextuality and metaphor, he creates a work of infinite interpretation, in which the active involvement of the reader is key.
Peter hunt’s ‘Instruction and Delight’ provides a starting point for the study of children’s literature, challenging assumptions made about writing for children and they are trivial, fast and easy. Children’s literature is a conservative and reading it just to escape from the harsh realities of adulthood. It’s probably the most exciting for all literary studies, and a wide range of texts, from novels and stories to picture books , and from oral forms to multimedia and the internet , so it presents a major challenge and can be considered for many reasons. It is important because it is integrated into the cultural, educational and social thinking for the success of the publishing and media, and it is important to our personal development. Things that may seem simple at fist, how children understand the texts, how these differ from the
The construction of children’s literature was a gradual process. For a long period of time children’s books were frowned upon. The stories were said to be vulgar and frightening. Adults censored children’s ears to stories of daily life, tales with improbable endings were not to be heard. It was not until the mid 1800s that stories of fairies and princesses began to be recognized. Although children’s literature was accepted, the books were not available for all children. With limited access to education, few public libraries, and the books’ costs, these texts were only available to the middle and high- class. As public education and libraries grew so did the accessibility of books and their popularity. They no longer were considered offensive, but rather cherished and loved by many children. Children’s literature became orthodox and a revolution began, changing literature as it was known.
Damrosch, David. Longman anthology of British literature. 2nd ed. Vol. A. New York: Longman, 2004. Print.
When one thinks of children’s storybooks, one robotically assumes a simple fairy tale with no particular purpose. Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland, is very successful in means of portraying a deeper message with usage of symbolism and satire. Just about all the characters found in the story function as a symbol, leaving the rest for the reader’s imagination. Even though Alice in Wonderland does not fulfill the “classic fairy tale,” it does not leave one, particularly children, questioning the story. Because Alice in Wonderland is a dream-like tale, it enables Lewis Carroll to criticize and make fun of the Victorian Age. Like many other known authors, they use satire to point out faults of society and the people in a humorous manner. The core idea behind Alice in Wonderland is the chaos that comes with puberty and growing up. More importantly, the use of the rabbit hole, growing and shrinking, having to identify herself to characters, and Alice herself help to construct the main theme of the story.