When Toys Come Alive: Narratives of Animation, Metamorphosis, and DevelopmentYale University Press, 01.01.1994 - 257 Seiten Since the eighteenth century, toys have had an important place in European and American stories written for children and adults, often taking on a secret, sensual, even carnivalesque life of their own. In this groundbreaking work, Lois Rostow Kuznets studies the role of toy characters in works ranging from older classics like Pinocchio, Winnie the Pooh, and The Velveteen Rabbit, through modern texts like The Mouse and His Child and the popular comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, to the latest science fiction featuring robots and cyborgs. Using a variety of intertextual critical approaches, including feminist theory, neo-Freudian Winnicott play analysis, structuralism, and neo-Marxism, Kuznets focuses on how toy characters, like children's play, can be associated with deep human needs, desires, and fears. Anxiety about being "real"--an autonomous subject rather than an object--permeates many of the texts Kuznets analyzes. Toy fantasies also raise existential issues of power: what it means either to dominate or to be dominated by more powerful beings, and what dangers might lie in the transformation of a toy into a living being--an act of human creativity that represents a challenge to divine creation. Kuznets concludes that although many of these texts subvert conformity on an individual level, they also tend to evoke a romantic nostalgia that supports the underlying values and hierarchies of a patriarchal society. |
Inhalt
An Introduction to | 1 |
Their First | 10 |
On the Couch with Calvin | 34 |
Coming out in Flesh | 59 |
Where Have All the Young | 76 |
The Doll Connection | 95 |
Magic Settings Transitional | 118 |
The AnimalToy League | 136 |
Beyond the Last Visible Toy | 157 |
Monsters | 180 |
Notes | 205 |
233 | |
249 | |
Andere Ausgaben - Alle anzeigen
When Toys Come Alive: Narratives of Animation, Metamorphosis, and Development Lois R. Kuznets Eingeschränkte Leseprobe - 1994 |
Häufige Begriffe und Wortgruppen
A. A. Milne adult Adventures Amy's Eyes Andersen's animals anthropomorphized appears become Bianco boys Brontë Calvin Calvin and Hobbes captain chapter childhood children's literature Christopher Robin Collodi consciousness considered created creative creatures culture depiction desires dollhouse Drosselmeier early experience fairy fantasy father feel female fiction figures gender girls Godden's golem Golliwog Hickory's Hitty Hitty's Hoban Hobbes Hoffmann's House human imaginative Jensina literary lives London Lucie magic male Manny Margery Williams metamorphosis Milne Milne's miniature Miss Hickory mother mouse child narrator Nathanael nature Newbery Medal nineteenth century novel Nutcracker Oddkins parents Philip Pinocchio play playthings Poor Cecco protagonists puppet quest reader reality relationship role scene seems sexual social society subversion suggests tale tion toy characters toy maker toy narratives toy soldiers toy stories traditional transitional objects twentieth-century Velveteen Rabbit Winnicott Winnie the Pooh wooden writing young