Conference Presentations by Jessica W H Lim
This paper examines the pedagogical children’s book was as an object that mediated the exchange... more This paper examines the pedagogical children’s book was as an object that mediated the exchange of knowledge and sympathy between adults and children, literary and projected. The paper analyses Anna Laetitia Barbauld’s 'Lessons for Children', Lady Ellenor Fenn’s 'Cobwebs to Catch Flies', Sarah Trimmer’s 'An Easy Introduction to Nature' and Mary-Ann Kilner's 'Familiar Dialogues' to examine how the conversational format projects an interactive and periodic reading experience between adults and children. As the literary maternal figures guide their literary charges through daily activities and tell episodic stories, the conversational language and sentence structures encourage implied adult and child readers to use the linguistic and imaginative space created by the narrated events to participate in communal practical activities. The creation of these shared spaces does not diminish or alter the works’ pedagogical purpose, nor does it affect the hierarchical relationship between the guiding adult and the guided child. However, creating this common linguistic space creates a ladder-like model that facilitates a non-dichotomous relationship between the teacher and the student, placing the pedagogical process in a relational interaction softened by sympathy. The paper thus challenges models of subjugation that have been applied to children's literature studies and posits that using an eighteenth-century conception of the adult-child temporal spectrum enables a more productive understanding of the origins and developments of children's literature.
The eighteenth-century interest in childhood as a formative period resulted in a proliferation o... more The eighteenth-century interest in childhood as a formative period resulted in a proliferation of tracts and children’s stories, as educational theorists sought to develop morally, socially engaged citizens. 'Raising Dissenting Voices: Anna Laetitia Barbauld, John Aikin, and Evenings at Home' examines how Barbauld and Aikin’s collaboratively authored text employs techniques of multivocality to depict (and create) the family as paradigmatic for the formation of rational (Dissenting) English citizens. The paper explores the incorporation of multiple voices within the stories, fables, and dialogues that compose 'Evenings at Home', with a particular focus on how the juxtaposition of tales creates a thematic tension that projects and invokes conversational practices. This paper therefore sheds light on the encoding of levels of plurality and types of multivocality within 'Evenings at Home'. By examining the relationship between these types of multivocality, this paper studies how 'Evenings at Home' presents familial conversation as the means by which children may be trained as critical thinkers and globally aware citizens, confident to voice their rational Dissent.
It is an intellectual truism that British Romantic literature was preoccupied with the notion of ... more It is an intellectual truism that British Romantic literature was preoccupied with the notion of the child, but frequently these Romantic literary children are silent objects and passive participants. ‘“But puss, why did you kill the rabbit?”: Anna Laetitia Barbauld and the speaking child in Romantic-era England’ explores Barbauld’s creation of conceptual and implied spaces in which her child characters vocalise their questions in Lessons for Children (1778–79) and Hymns in Prose for Children (1781). The paper examines Barbauld’s use of this conceptual and implied space created by a child’s questions as a means by which she encourages implied child readers to vocalise their identity as human beings and social citizens.
Barbauld has been rehabilitated as a key proto-Romanticist whose works embody the shift between the Enlightenment and British Romanticism. Her presentation of children within her children’s texts provides an alternate voice to the ‘de-contextualiz[ed] child […] associated with timeless immutability’ Judith Plotz identifies in multiple British Romantic texts. Charles in Lessons for Children and the child speakers in Hymns in Prose are deeply contextualised figures whose speech utterances and questions emerge from Barbauld’s Associationist framework, and in the context of an affectionate relationship with the (maternal) narrator. The paper focuses on Barbauld’s use of conversational modes and types of questions as she stages exemplary conversations between developing child figures and an affectionate, guiding adult narrator, encouraging her implied child readers to use their voices to explore and assert their sense of self-identity and citizenship.
‘Recreating old classics of the nursery: Charles Lamb and “adult” fiction in the Godwins’ Juvenil... more ‘Recreating old classics of the nursery: Charles Lamb and “adult” fiction in the Godwins’ Juvenile Library’ re-evaluates Charles Lamb’s contributions to the Godwins’ Juvenile Library, with a particular focus on The King and Queen of Hearts and The Adventures of Ulysses. Through an analysis of the literary content and paratext of these two texts that were adapted for child readers, this paper sheds light on the extent to which Charles Lamb’s vision of a Romantic child reader and conventional critical views of Charles Lamb’s vision of the Romantic child reader are complicated by Lamb’s appropriation of adult fiction, and by the packaging and marketing of the texts by the Godwins’ Juvenile Library.
While the rise in interdisciplinary studies has facilitated an overdue reassessment of the writin... more While the rise in interdisciplinary studies has facilitated an overdue reassessment of the writings of Victorian author George MacDonald, the spiritual potential of bereavement and grief in MacDonald’s stories is scarcely discussed. This paper will explore two of MacDonald’s short stories from a theological framework, using a literary analysis of the motif of the embrace of the dead infant to explore how the stories present a sacramental theology of grief.
Drafts by Jessica W H Lim
This article examines the networks of adaptation and appropriation in subsequent editions of Char... more This article examines the networks of adaptation and appropriation in subsequent editions of Charles Lamb's 'The Adventures of Ulysses', with a focus on ways in which editors censor Lamb's text to transform the work for different reading contexts.
Publications by Jessica W H Lim
This paper examines the relationship between the narrative text and illustrations in Dodgeson’s s... more This paper examines the relationship between the narrative text and illustrations in Dodgeson’s self-illustrated manuscript of Alice Under Ground, and the print publication, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, as illustrated by John Tenniel. By situating Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as a text in dialogue with Darwinian economics and theories of evolution, this paper argues that Carroll and Tenniel’s illustrations depict the impossibility of maintaining innocence and the state of childhood in a world overrun by consumption, riddled with unstable Darwinian economics and theories, and corrupted by inefficient and arbitrary authoritarian institutions. Indeed, the interplay between text and image ultimately suggests that these systems regulating Victorian England will inevitably force the child to enter an absurd world where everyone is mad, or adopt an adult rationalist view⎯both choices curtailing the possibility of the carefree, innocent child.
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Conference Presentations by Jessica W H Lim
Barbauld has been rehabilitated as a key proto-Romanticist whose works embody the shift between the Enlightenment and British Romanticism. Her presentation of children within her children’s texts provides an alternate voice to the ‘de-contextualiz[ed] child […] associated with timeless immutability’ Judith Plotz identifies in multiple British Romantic texts. Charles in Lessons for Children and the child speakers in Hymns in Prose are deeply contextualised figures whose speech utterances and questions emerge from Barbauld’s Associationist framework, and in the context of an affectionate relationship with the (maternal) narrator. The paper focuses on Barbauld’s use of conversational modes and types of questions as she stages exemplary conversations between developing child figures and an affectionate, guiding adult narrator, encouraging her implied child readers to use their voices to explore and assert their sense of self-identity and citizenship.
Drafts by Jessica W H Lim
Publications by Jessica W H Lim
Barbauld has been rehabilitated as a key proto-Romanticist whose works embody the shift between the Enlightenment and British Romanticism. Her presentation of children within her children’s texts provides an alternate voice to the ‘de-contextualiz[ed] child […] associated with timeless immutability’ Judith Plotz identifies in multiple British Romantic texts. Charles in Lessons for Children and the child speakers in Hymns in Prose are deeply contextualised figures whose speech utterances and questions emerge from Barbauld’s Associationist framework, and in the context of an affectionate relationship with the (maternal) narrator. The paper focuses on Barbauld’s use of conversational modes and types of questions as she stages exemplary conversations between developing child figures and an affectionate, guiding adult narrator, encouraging her implied child readers to use their voices to explore and assert their sense of self-identity and citizenship.