A Journey Backwards: History Through Style in Children’s Fiction

A & C Black’s Flashbacks series invites its readers to “Read a Flashback...take a journey backwards in time”. There are several ways in which children’s fiction has encouraged its readers to engage with and care about history: through the presence of ghosts, through frame stories, time travel, or simply setting the narrative in the past. However, modern critical theory has questioned the validity of traditional modes of the genre. This paper defends historical fiction for children by arguing that, whatever narrative strategy is used, such writing stands or falls through its evocation of a historical sensibility—or what Raymond Williams calls a ‘structure of feeling’. This is achieved through elements of style, both in the representation of dialogue and thought. Pastiche, sometimes thought of as an unsatisfactory feature of contemporary culture, can often perform a similar evocative function. The paper is based on close readings of Alan Garner’s The Stone Book from 1976, and 21st century fiction by Kevin Crossley-Holland, Kate Pennington and Paul Bajoria. If these books do not overtly use the techniques of “historiographic metafiction”, it may be because awareness of historiography is implicit in the very texture of their writing. Christopher Ringrose is Principal Lecturer in English at the University of Northampton, and Head of Learning and Teaching in the Arts. He is an Editor of The Journal of Postcolonial Writing, and has published on Canadian literature, literary theory, eighteenth-century literature, and autobiography, as well as writing a study of the novelist Ben Okri, published in 2006. For CLE, he wrote on Lying in Children’s Fiction in Volume 21 No.3 (July 2006).     

Watching the Detectives: Mark Haddon’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time</Emphasis> and Kevin Brooks’ <Emphasis Type="Italic">Martyn Pig</Emphasis>

Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time was the cross-over publishing sensation of 2003. It has been the subject of widespread critical and commercial acclaim and has won prestigious UK prizes including the Whitbread Book of the Year and the Guardian’s Children’s Fiction Prize. It is still enjoying considerable commercial success in the best-seller lists. This essay reads Haddon’s novel alongside Kevin Brooks’ Martyn Pig (2002), winner of the Branford Boase Award and short-listed for the Clip Carnegie Medal. Brooks’ hero, Martyn has a troubled teenage life, and like Haddon’s Christopher, he turns to detective fiction in order to shape his own experience. The essay develops the idea that “every life is in search of a narrative” (Richard Kearney, On Stories, p. 4) and argues that detective fiction, in particular, provides structures that allow Brooks’ and Haddon’s first person narrators to make sense of their confusing worlds.Ruth Gilbert is senior lecturer in English at University College, Winchester, England. She has published on gender and sexuality in early modern literature. Recent research has focused on memory and identity in contemporary British Jewish fiction. This article stems from an ongoing interest in teenage and “cross-over” fiction and creative writing. She is currently writing a novel for teenagers.     

Gatty's Tale; or virtue restored

Most children's books assume a moral framework in which their characters live and grow, but in most cases, morality remains extrinsic to the characters themselves: it is what happens to them and what they do, rather than what they believe and who they become. Kevin Crossley-Holland's novel Gatty's Tale , is unusual in that it presents a protagonist for whom being good matters for its own sake. This article explores Gatty's developing goodness, and shows how Crossley-Holland helps young readers understand what virtue is.     

被误读的死亡——凯文·卡特并非因照片《饥饿的苏丹》自杀

本文对1994年获普利策新闻奖的摄影师凯文·卡特(Kevin Carter)的死因进行研究,发现他并非像一些人所说的是因为拍摄《饥饿的苏丹》(The Starving of Sudan)后因自责而自杀。人们之所以会误读他的死亡,多是传播者为了显示新闻道德困境,进行脱离事实的猜测并用黄色新闻的叙事方式造成的。     

论澳大利亚陆克文政府向“被偷的一代”表示道歉的路径选择

澳大利亚前总理陆克文在任期间推行较为积极的土著政策,其中向土著居民表示道歉开了澳大利亚联邦政府土著政策之先河。为了体现工党政府此举的良苦用心,并且希望得到土著社会的认可以及非土著社会的同情与支持,陆克文政府在选择以何种名义向土著居民尤其是向"被偷的一代"表示道歉、道歉的前奏、道歉的时间和场合以及道歉的方式和内容等方面均做了精心策划和准备。可以说,陆克文政府对向土著居民尤其是"被偷的一代"致歉的路径选择是深思熟虑的产物。从最初在联邦大选中作出承诺,上任后选择以联盟议会的名义致歉,倾听"被偷的一代"的故事,到决定在新一届联邦议会开幕式发表致歉,并采用了"讲故事"、"设想"以及"作出承诺"等方式来表达真诚的歉意,而事后又对"被偷的一代"成员之一拉纳.隆伽拉.费耶进行了回访,各环节之间存在合理的逻辑关联,构建了一个有机的整体。正因为如此,陆克文政府的政治道歉赢得了很好的社会反响,从而有力地诠释了政治不仅是一门严谨细致的科学,也是一门饱含情感的艺术。     

都市意象:一个当代电影批评的新视角

由凯文·林奇的都市意象概念引发,思考当代电影中呈现的都市景观的意义,都市意象的五个要素以及都市景观意象与电影中的都市意象的关联等问题。     

Museums and popular culture revisited: Kevin Moore and the politics of pop

This article recognizes the (soon to be) tenth anniversary of the publication of Kevin Moore's Museums and Popular Culture. An assessment of this book is made in relation to Moore's work in the National Football Museum and the International Football Institute. Included in the article is an interview with Moore, evaluating what he believes were the successes and failures of the project he instigated in Museums and Popular Culture.     

Ecological correlates of adolescents' aspirations: Gender-related differences

The study examined to what extent the educational and occupational aspirations of adolescents were related to their perceptions of different learning contexts after taking into account associations between the aspirations and earlier measures of individual characteristics and family environments. Data were collected from 516 Australian 16-year-olds (266 females, 250 males) to assess their perceptions of family, teacher, peer, and school support for learning. Five years earlier data had been collected of their social status, ability, family environments, academic achievement, and attitudes to school. Blockwise selection and the calculation of sheaf coefficients were used in path models to examine the influences on aspirations. For educational aspirations, most of the effects of the measures from the initial survey were mediated by an ecological construct that gauged the adolescents' perceptions of parent-teacher support for learning. Occupational aspirations of females were influenced only by ecological variables while for males they were related either directly or indirectly to all the ecological and individual measures in the analysis. The findings indicated the significance for aspiration formation of an ecological construct defined by adolescents' perceptions of the support and encouragement for learning by fathers, mothers, and teachers. Further aspiration research is suggested to explore the possible implications of this ecological Construct.