a fascinating array of recent fiction that exposes society's collective fantasies and fears.PDemon or Doll investigates the ambiguous, contradictory ways childhood has been formulated in the twentieth century and the resulting ambivalence reflected in contemporary fiction. Grounding her exploration in a discussion of traditional constructions of childhood and the influence of the Romantics, Ellen Pifer shows how Dickens translated the Romantic idyll of original innocence into poignant images of poor children, abused or abandoned by a harsh, increasingly mechanical society. At the turn of the twentieth century, Henry James created provocative images of childhood that anticipated the contemporary, post-Freudian
child. Pifer engages a diverse and distinguished body of work by a global range of authors, addressing in each chapter a novel or cluster of novels in which the
child's image serves as a nexus for investigating literary and cultural issues. The theories and observations of social historians, psychologists, and cultural critics -- from Philippe Aries to Raymond Williams, Freud to Foucault -- clarify the significance of the
child's created image.PNovels by William Golding, Doris Lessing, Milan Kundera, Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie, and Jerzy Kosinski bring readers face to face with shattered, often grotesque images of the
child. But several of postwar fiction's most experimental writers, including Vladimir Nabokov, Don DeLillo,and lan McEwan, create texts that render surprising faith in original innocence. Whether the contemporary image of childhood appears intact or fractured, wholesome or horrifying, its many facets create a mirror in which we seek glimpses of our elusive, original selves.
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