Literary Childhoods and the Force of Nature: From Nature’s Child to Homelessness

Project summary

The literary construction of childhood has traditionally been linked to Rousseau’s view of children as ‘belonging in nature’. Through close reading of a selection of well-known children’s fantasy texts this project analyzes the relationship between the literary construction of childhood and that of nature. While the narrative structure ‘home – away – home’ has been linked with a Romantic view of nature and childhood, returning the child home to safety and relative innocence, a wave of dystopian young adult literature has established a different narrative pattern: ‘ home – away – now what?’ The project asks whether this new narrative pattern is rooted in a different view of nature and of children: one influenced by the global climate crisis.