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The Precocious Child in Victorian Literature and Culture

Development and Selfhood from Darwin to Freud

  • Book
  • May 2024

Overview

Authors:
  1. Roisín Laing

    1. Durham, United Kingdom

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  • Extends an area of emergent interest in Victorian childhood studies— precocity
  • Draws on a range of Victorian literary genres, from children’s literature to evolutionary theory
  • Locates the origin of present-day attitudes towards precocious children in Victorian debates about progress

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Keywords

  • Literature and Childhood
  • Charles Darwin
  • William Wordsworth
  • Victorian Literature
  • Literature and Cultural Studies
  • Evolution
  • Sigmund Freud

About this book

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). Roisín 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.

 

Authors and Affiliations

  • Durham, United Kingdom

    Roisín Laing

About the author

Roisín 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.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: The Precocious Child in Victorian Literature and Culture

  • Book Subtitle: Development and Selfhood from Darwin to Freud

  • Authors: Roisín Laing

  • Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-41381-0Due: 30 May 2024

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-41384-1Due: 30 May 2024

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-41382-7Due: 30 May 2024

  • Series ISSN: 2634-6494

  • Series E-ISSN: 2634-6508

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: X, 279

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