Beyond the Grammar of Story, or How Can Children's Literature Criticism Benefit from Narrative Theory?

Maria Nikolajeva

Children's Literature Association Quarterly, Volume 28, Number 1, Spring2003, pp. 5-16 (Article)

Published by Johns Hopkins University PressDOI:

For additional information about this article

Access provided by Longwood University & (Viva) (12 Apr 2018 12:42 GMT)

https://doi.org/10.1353/chq.0.1702

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/249991

Children's Literature Association Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. I, 2003

Beyond the Grammar of Story, or How Can Children'sLiterature Criticism Benefit from Narrative Theory?by Maria Nikolajeva

Narrativity: The set of properties characterizing NAR-RATIVE and distinguishing it from nonnarrative; the formaland contextual features making a narrative more or less narra-tive, as it were. (Gerald Prince, A Dictionary of Narratology)

The purpose of this essay is to show what analyticaltools narratology can give us to examine children's fic-tion. Narrative theory is gradually becoming a hot topicin children's literature research, of which the present is-sue of the Quarterly is the best token.1 Yet compared toother contemporary directions of inquiry, narrative theoryis still taking its very first steps within children's litera-ture criticism.2 Furthermore, it has repeatedly beenpointed out that while children's literature scholars maysuccessfully borrow analytical tools from narratology fora systematic investigation of the various levels of narra-tive, we should be above all interested in a "children's-literature-specific theory" (Hunt, "Narrative" 192). Myaim in this essay is thus twofold: to demonstrate the ad-vantage of narratology as distinct from other critical di-rections, and to pinpoint the ways narrative theory is par-ticularly applicable in children's literature scholarship.

In what way is then a narratological approach dif-ferent from conventional approaches to children's litera-ture? To anticipate accusations of critical bias, I hurry topoint out that I am not using the word "conventional" ina pejorative sense. I am also aware of the fallacy of offer-ing a specific theory as a panacea, as is sometimes done,for instance, with feminist criticism. Narrative theory isnot opposed to other critical theories; it is just one of many.Yet for the sake of clarity, I will use juxtaposition as amethod of argumentation in this essay to illustrate thedistinctive features of narratological approach.

The decisive question for a literary historian is, forinstance, "What makes Alice in Wonderland an outstand-ing children's book?" This question has been confrontedby many critics, who have examined the portrayal of thechild and the society (socio-historical approaches, child-hood studies), the reflection of the author's actual life (bio-graphical approach) or his psyche (psychoanalysis), thedisplacement of myth (archetypal theory), the linguisticacrobatics (literary stylistics), gender issues (feminist criti-cism), the philosophical implications (phenomenology),the impact on later authors (intertextuality), the receptionof the book by young and adult readers (reader-response

criticism), its fate in other countries (translation studies),its dissemination through other media (cultural studies),and so on. The question for a narra tologist is: "What makesAlice in Wonderland a children's book?" This question hasgiven those who have cared to pose it at all a lot of head-ache. We know by intuition that it is a children's book,and it has throughout the years functioned as a children'sbook, but it does not match any conventional definitions.It is not uncommon to interrogate books that do not matchour preconceived opinions about children's literature.Some critics say that Alice in Wonderland or Winnie-the-Pooh are great books because they in actual fact are notchildren's books (seee.g., Shavit, Poetics;"Double"). Such state-ments are often madewithout further reflec-tions, based on as-sumptions like "Thebook is too difficult;children don't under-stand it." In doing so,critics apply reader-response ideas andconstruct an abstract,ideal picture of a"child" who can orcannot enjoy the par-ticular book. They alsoapply pedagogical cri-teria and judge thebooks on the basis oftheir own opinions about pedagogical values (which maybe educational, moral, or ideological). Often critics alsotrust what authors say about their books ("I write for chil-dren" or "I do not write for children") or how publishersand library services classify them. All these are arbitrarycriteria, which in addition change throughout history. Thenarratological question "What characterizes a children'sbook as a narrative, distinct from all other types of narra-tive?" presupposes a totally different methodology.

Below I discuss some of the central issues ofchildren's-literature-specific narrative theory, posing ques-tions that can be used as points of departure for excitingstudies. I will focus on the various aspects of children's

Cover of Alice's Adventures in

Wonderland by Lewis Carroll,illustrated by Helen Oxenbury (1999)

© 2003 Children's Literature Association

Children's Literature Association Quarterly

novels, such as plot structure, characterization, perspec-tive, and temporality.

Aspects of narrativity

The central question of narrative theory is "how?"as opposed to the "what?" of many other approachesdominant in children's literature research because of itsclose connection with pedagogy. The prevailing questionin a pedagogical approach is "What is a good children'sbook?" (with subsequent discussions of the various im-plications of "good"). The issues of form are often con-sidered secondary as compared to ideology, social or moralvalues, and educational objectives. Narratology is ex-pressly not concerned with the major objects of investiga-tion in children's literature research: social context, theauthor's intentions, or the reader.

Some conventional questions about a literary text asa whole may thus be: "What is the book about, superfi-cially and on a deeper level? What are its messages and theauthor's intentions? What ideology and values does it con-vey? How is it perceived and interpreted by its primary(children) and secondary (adult) audiences?" This is whatmost studies of children's literature, both surveys and stud-ies focused on individual authors and works, have so farprimarily been preoccupied with. Such approaches are fullylegitimate and can produce brilliant results. The questionsfor a narratologist are "What constitutes a narrative?" and"What elements is a narrative made of?" Contrary to com-mon belief, the study object of narratology is thusnarrativity, and not the narrative as such. The concept ofnarrativity implies the sum of all features in a narrativethat make it a narrative, including composition (plot, tem-poral structure), characterization (narrative devices usedby writers to reveal a character), and perspective (voice andpoint of view). All these elements are manifested in aslightly-or occasionally profoundly-different manner inchildren's literature as compared to general literature. Oneof the essential characteristics of children's literature is thecognitive gap between the adult writer and the child reader,pinpointed through the widely accepted concepts of single,double, and dual address (Wall). Furthermore, critics haveemphasized the importance of "embrace" (McGillis, "Em-brace") or "engagement" (Wyile) of narration in children'sliterature. These are just some examples of the questionsthat a "children's-literature-specific" narratology can pose,which also adds new dimensions to the discussions on thenature of children's literature and its difference from allother kinds of fiction.

Most scholars agree about the distinction betweenthe content of the narrative, or story, "what is being told,"and its form, or discourse, "how it is told" (Chatman 31-34; applied to children's literature Stephens 8-46). Themajority of studies in children's literature have concen-

trated on the story level, analyzing it from many differentangles. Concerning composition, the conventional ques-tions are "What happens in the book? Who does what,when, where, how and why?" These questions can be dealtwith by a variety of methods. We can examine how thestory reflects the time and society within which it waswritten, investigate the author's overt or covert opinions,or contemplate how the story is relevant for its readers.Within children's literature research much discussion hasbeen concerned what subjects and themes are suitable ornot suitable for young readers.

One question narratologists ask is "What are theconstituents of a plot?" Early formalist and structuraliststudies, the forerunners of contemporary narratology,were often focused on the grammar of story, its morphol-ogy (classification of narrative elements), and its syntax(rules for combining narrative elements into a meaning-ful whole). Vladimir Propp's Morphology of the Folktale isthe best example. Since the structure of children's booksis generally more rigid than in modern, especially mod-ernist and postmodernist literature, it may be fruitful tostart with surface structures, but we will not come fur-ther than to a very general picture. Still, it is gratifying toexamine the basic structure of a children's novel, amongother things, in order to see how much children's fictionhas inherited from traditional narratives, such as folktales,both in plot and in character gallery. At the same time wecan demonstrate how endlessly more complex a contem-porary psychological children's novel is as compared to afolktale. Scholars who believe that children's fiction is a"simple" form have often studied formulaic and genre-dependent stories with their recurrent patterns and stockcharacters, thus ascribing children's fiction at large thefeatures only inherent to a limited fraction of it.

Formulaic fiction, such as adventure, crime, or hor-ror, is especially suitable for structural studies.3 However,in any narrative we can discern what events constitute aplot and how they are related to each other. A recurrentelement in children's literature is the protagonist's physi-cal dislocation, transportation to a new, unknown territory,which allows the freedom to explore the world withoutadult supervision. This element, corresponding to Propp'sinitial function of "absence" in folktales, is a morphologi-cal structure typical for children's literature. Syntactically,it must necessarily appear in the beginning of the story.This is a very primitive example of how the grammar ofnarrative can be applied to children's literature.

According to a well-established view that goes backto Aristotle, a story must have a beginning, middle, andend. Most children's books follow this rule, and the plot isbuilt along the scheme: exposition-complication-climax-solution. However, just as in modern adult novels, somechildren's books, such as the Ramona series, deviate fromthis order. Instead, they are "a slice of life" (Scholes and

Beyond the Grammar of the Story

Kellogg 13), a middle narrative, without a natural begin-ning or end. This implies, paradoxically, that they displaya lower degree of narrativity, since they deviate from the"normal" plot, for better or for worse. Like all other litera-ture, children's literature is not a fixed body of texts, delin-eated once and for all—which is how some children's lit-erature experts are trying to present it. The définitions offifty years ago no longer match the scope of children's sto-ries written and published today. Thus, narratology helpsus to discern new ways of constructing plots, especially innovels employing multiple narratives (see McCallum).

A question much discussed in connection with theintrinsic features of children's literature is the happy end-ing. Narrative analysis enables us to distinguish betweenstructural closure (a satisfactory round-up of the plot) andpsychological closure, bringing the protagonist's personalconflicts into balance (see Kermode). Normally, in achildren's story, these coincide. When Pinocchio is turnedinto a human boy, the plot, involving his achieving thistransformation, is concluded, and the protagonist's con-flicts with the external enemies as well as with his ownself are solved. Peter Pan's victory over Hook is synchro-nized with Wendy's accomplished quest for Self and herreadiness to go home. However, there may be a discrep-ancy between the structural and psychological closure.The arrival in their grandmother's house is a natural wayto finish the Tillerman children's journey in Homecoming;however, it does not solve the main conflict of the story,does not bring back the children's mother, and does notnecessarily promise an easy and happy future for the char-acters. The superficial plot is concluded; the "human" plotis left open-ended. The ironic title adds to the ambiguityof the ending. Such closure can be called dissonant.

The consonant closure, or the conventional happyending—which in most cases presupposes a combinationof structural and psychological closure—is what manyscholars and teachers immediately associate with children'sliterature and put forward as an essential requirement in agood children's book. Folktales tend to have a happy end-ing, expressed by the coda "lived happily ever after." Sincechildren's fiction borrows many of its structures fromfolktales, most traditional children's books have a happyending, at least superficially: Dorothy returns home, theWhite Witch is eliminated, the treasure is found, and so on.In contemporary novels for children, we notice a deviationfrom the obligatory happy ending, on a structural as wellas a psychological level. Instead of closure, implying round-ing off the plot, a happy reunion of the protagonist and hisor her object of quest, or the victory over the antagonist,we see a new opening, aperture.

Unlike a structural open ending, aperture does notin the first place imply the possibility of further events(providing an opportunity for a sequel), but an indeter-minacy concerning both what has actually happened and

what might still happen (Morson 169-72). The ambigu-ous ending of The Giver is a good example. Aperture isthus an ending that allows an infinite bifurcation of inter-pretations. In fact, aperture precludes a sequel, since de-pending on the bifurcation we choose, the course of fur-ther events would be radically different. Aperture stimu-lates the readers' imagination in a way traditional closurecan never do. For instance, we are left in uncertainty as tohow Jess in Bridge to Terabithia can go on without Leslie orthe protagonist of The Great Gilly Hopkins without MamieTrotter. In any case, aperture seems a more natural end-ing for a children's novel, since child characters are al-ways left halfway in their maturation; they are by defini-tion not fully developed as individuals. Yet paradoxically,the happy ending is one of the foremost criteria in theconventional definitions of children's literature, as wellas one of the most common prejudices about it. In Aristo-telian poetics, a distinction is made between comic andtragic plots, or plots with upwards and downwards move-ment. In a comic plot, a character disempowered and op-pressed in the beginning gains power and riches in theend. In a tragic plot, a character in power is brought down,either by fate (Oedipus) or his own actions (King Lear).Traditionally, children's literature only makes use of comic,upward plots; yet this is not an absolute rule. An in-depthstudy of plots can therefore throw some light on exactlyhow children's fiction is different from general fiction inthis particular respect. The most fruitful results would beachieved when combining narratological and psychologi-cal approaches, as does Peter Brooks in Reading for the Plot.

Characters and characterization

In speaking about literary characters, the traditionalquestions are: "What do characters represent?" and "Whoor what are they?" An interpretation of a character can bedone from the text itself and not uncommonly from ourextra-textual experiences. We can discuss how boys andgirls, parents and teachers, immigrants and ethnic minori-ties are portrayed in children's literature of any givenperiod. A vast majority of protagonists in children's lit-erature are orphans, and we can speculate about histori-cal, psychological, and even purely structural reasons forthis. We can also analyze concrete characters, such as PippiLongstocking, Anne of Green Gables, or Curious George.We have a variety of tools for such analyses, treating char-acters from a socio-historical viewpoint, as representativesof their time and social group; or from a psychological,even psychoanalytical viewpoint, as bearers of certainpsychological features; or from a biographical viewpoint,as reflections of their authors' lives and opinions. Thegender aspect has become a significant point of depar-ture. Attempts have been made to define certain charac-ters as bearers of nationhood.

8 Children's Literature Association Quarterly

For a narratologist, the essential questions are "Howare characters constructed by authors?" and "How are theyrevealed for readers?" Literary characters seem to be sucha self-evident part of fiction that very few studies are de-voted to them.4 There may be several explanations of thisgap in scholarship. New Criticism has been hard on char-acter, and postmodern views of art have taken the defama-tion of character further still. The aesthetic ofpostmodernism strongly interrogates the stability and unityof the individual, thus claiming that literary characters aspsychological entities are impossible and unnecessary. Thefallacy of such critical directions in their attitude towardcharacter seems to be that they depart from a limited scopeof overtly modernistic or postmodernistic literary worksthat indeed render characters insignificant; based on those,the conclusion is drawn that characters are subordinate infiction at large. Already in the title Reading (Absent) Charac-ter, Thomas Docherty declares his position in charactertheory. However, despite the poststructural denigration ofcharacters, they are still central in fiction; we read fictionbecause we are interested in human nature and human re-lationships as revealed through fictive characters. Inchildren's literature, characters presumably provide themain source of various subjectivities and thus a variety ofexperiences. This is not to say that characters are more im-portant in children's fiction than in general fiction; yet achildren's novel devoid of characters or employing "can-celled" characters is hardly conceivable.

On the other hand, children's literature presents aninteresting illustration of one of the central questions emerg-ing in connection with fictional stories, that is, the relation-ship between plot and character. In classic poetics, charac-ters are subordinate to actions and events, and they are notsupposed to possess any other traits than base or noble(Aristotle). Today we put much higher demands on the lit-erary characters' psychological and ethical dimensions. Thedistinction between the novel of incident and the novel ofcharacter, connected to Henry James (Art; Theory), can alsobe described in terms of plot-oriented and character-ori-ented narratives (Scholes and Kellogg 233-39; Todorov 66),a juxtaposition frequently used in children's literature re-search. The majority of children's books are action-oriented;that is, they focus more on plot than on character and char-acterization. Until recently, perhaps the middle of the twen-tieth century, most children's books did not portray char-acters with any other personality traits than good or evil.Perry Nodelman, among others, goes so far as to maintainaction-orientation as one of the foremost aesthetic charac-teristics of children's literature and the main source of thepleasure in reading children's books (Pleasures 190; "Plea-sure"). This may be partially true, yet this distinction wouldexclude a large number of contemporary novels from thedomain of children's literature, while they certainly qualifyas such according to other criteria. Apparently novels such

as Anne of Green Gables, Harriet the Spy, Bridge to Terabithia,The Great Gilly Hopkins, Carrie's War, Dear Mr. HensMw, orThe Planet of Junior Brown are not in the first place action-oriented.

As the title of Harold Bloom's study Shakespeare: TheInvention of the Human clearly suggests, Bloom claims thatthe psychological dimension in literary characters wasShakespeare's invention. Since children's fiction, at leastas a separate literary system, is a relatively recent phenom-enon in the history of literature, the psychological aspectof literary character in children's fiction did not emerge ona larger scale until the 1970s in the Western countries; inmany countries it has not appeared yet. Furthermore, sincechildren's literature has throughout history been exten-sively used as an educational implement, the characters inchildren's stories have been employed by authors as mouth-pieces and bearers of certain ideas and opinions, as ex-amples to follow or cautionary figures to learn from, ratherthan as independent subjectivities. This inevitable educa-tional aspect of children's fiction has seriously impeded adevelopment toward complex psychological characters,even though we can find examples of these already in cer-tain nineteenth-century children's texts.

A profound problem in dealing with literary charac-ters is their ontological status: are we to treat them as realpeople, with psychologically credible traits, or merely astextual constructions? In narratology, a distinction is madebetween two radically different approaches to characters:mimetic and semiotic.5 With a mimetic approach, we viewcharacters as real people and ascribe them a backgroundand psychological traits that may not have any support inthe text. The semiotic approach treats characters, as all othertextual elements, merely as a number of words, withoutany substance. The ontological question is highly relevantfor children's literature research, as there is a strong ten-dency to treat and judge characters in children's books as ifthey were real people. When schoolteachers ask questionssuch as "With whom would you like to be friends in thisbook?" they presuppose an understanding of characters asreal people. So do statements such as "If Tom Sawyer livedtoday he would be an ecological activist, or a neofascist, ora juvenile delinquent" or exam topics like "Describe a meet-ing between Tom Sawyer and Holden Caulfield." Literarycharacters do not exist outside their texts, and questionsthat cannot find support in the text are pointless. Innarratology, this fallacy has been summed up in a marvel-ous article title: "How many children had Lady Macbeth?"(Knights). In children's literature we can just as carelesslyask "Has Tom Sawyer had measles and how has this af-fected his disposition?" or "Has Heidi been injured becauseher mother did not nurse her?" I am now exaggerating tounderscore my argument, yet we should remember thatliterary characters need not behave according to patternsdescribed in psychology textbooks. I find it fascinating that

Beyond the Grammar of the Story

we are never given any background facts about Alice, ex-cept that she has a sister and a cat, and in the context of thenovel, it is quite fruitless to speculate what her life is likebefore and after her adventures in Wonderland.

Instead, narratology offers a number of epistemologi-cal questions, that is, questions about how we as readerscan understand characters we meet in books. For manycritics, the appeal of literature is exactly the fact that wecan more easily understand literary figures, homofictus, thanwe can ever learn to understand real people, homo sapiens(Forster 55f). Or, as Dorrit Cohn remarks, "[njarrative fic-tion is the only literary genre, as well as the only kind ofnarrative, in which the unspoken thoughts, feelings, per-ceptions of a person other than the speaker can be por-trayed" (7). However, it is only internal means of charac-terization that allow the transparency of character that Cohnrefers to in her title Transparent Minds; external character-ization leaves characters more or less opaque. Furthermore,in children's literature, characters are usually less transpar-ent than in the mainstream, because children's writers havea tendency to employ external rather than internal charac-terization. This is an interesting paradox. On the one hand,children's literature is supposed to be simple and easy tounderstand. We can then expect writers to use narrativedevices that would enable readers to come closer to char-acters and understand them better. But on the other hand,such devices are the most complex and therefore occur onlysparsely in children's literature.

External description is the simplest device as readersget a direct portrait of the character: Pippi has red hair anda nose like a small potato. Illustrations in children's bookscontribute to our immediate perception of characters. Theycan both complement textual descriptions or wholly sub-stitute for them. Otherwise writers are free to give us manydetails about the characters' looks or omit them altogether.Being an authorial narrative form, external description istangibly didactic. In The Secret Garden, the protagonist MaryLennox is described as pale, thin, yellow-skinned, and veryplain in the beginning of the book, while toward the end,she is presented as having gained weight, rosy cheeks, andshiny hair. Thus, the psychological evolution of the char-acter is emphasized, if not fully supplanted by a physicalimprovement, apparently for the sake of being more com-prehensible to young readers.

Narrative statements are frequently used in children'sfiction to comment on a variety of characteristics, such asthe character's external appearance (pretty, ugly, tall, fat),social position (rich, poor), intelligence (clever, stupid), ac-tions (brave), attitudes (greedy), manners (well-behaved,kind), and finally on the character's temporary feelings(cold, hungry, tired) or state of mind (agitated, frightened,glad). They can refer to a permanent, inherent quality (braveor clever by nature) or to a concrete action or reaction (braveor clever in a particular situation). Like descriptions, nar-

rative statements are didactic; they manipulate readers to-ward a certain interpretation of character. For instance, thetext says explicitly that Pippi's companions Tommy andAnnika are nice and well-behaved children. Mary in TheSecret Garden is promptly introduced as unattractive anddisagreeable and is then repeatedly characterized as lazyand spoiled. There is not much left for the reader to dothan accept these statements.

Characters' actions present them in a more indirectway. For instance, Pippi repeatedly treats her friends to nicefood and gives them presents. We understand that she isgenerous. Repetition of actions can thus emphasize char-acter traits. Mary's solipsistic behavior in the beginning ofthe novel is contrasted to her empathie involvement towardthe end. Once again, external traits are used to illustratethe internal changes. Reactions to events can also revealcharacter properties: Pippi reacts strongly when she en-counters injustice and violence. She does not hesitate tosave two small children from a fire. The narrator can com-ment on the character's actions and reactions or allow read-ers to draw their own conclusions. When the narrator ex-plains and comments too much, we usually say that thebook is overtly didactic. This is definitely the case in TheSecret Garden, where the author seems not to trust the read-ers to have detected the profound physical, emotional, andmoral changes in her characters Mary and Colin based ontheir behavior, but spells them out at some length. Charac-terization by actions is external and hence authorial; how-ever, the readers are free to interpret the actions and reac-tions according to their own understanding. Is Tom Saw-yer clever or naughty when he cheats other boys into white-washing the fence for him? How does coming to his ownfuneral characterize him: is he clever, cynical, silly, orthoughtless? Is Anne Shirley stupid or wicked when shegives Diana wine to drink or does she simply not knowbetter? Do characters have intentions behind their actions,do they act on impulse, or do things merely "happen" tothem? Are the actions in which characters are involved or-dinary or extraordinary? For obvious reasons we are moreinterested in the characters' extraordinary actions, sincethese go beyond our everyday experience and allow us toadopt a subjectivity that we lack in real life. Defamiliar-ization, or estrangement, is a powerful characterizationdevice, one which allows authors to put their charactersinto situations that are unfamiliar and therefore excitingfor readers. This device is widely exploited in fantasy, agenre that enjoys a significantly higher status in children'sfiction as compared to the mainstream.

Characters' relationships with other characters tellus a lot about their personalities. Do they have manyfriends? What are their relationships with parents andother adults, with siblings and other peers? Here, greaterfreedom of interpretation is allowed. Yet we must bear inmind that certain relationships are dependent on the plot

10 Children's Literature Association Quarterly

rather than on character traits. Parents who ignore theirchildren are not necessarily evil. Their physical or emo-tional absence may be the prerequisite for the protagonist'smaturation. Thus, we should not accuse Gilly Hopkins'smother of abandoning her child, since this abandonmentis the very premise of the narrative. It can, however, be aproblem for unsophisticated readers to make such an as-sessment; in many cases, they will judge absent or negli-gent parents as "bad," thus ascribing them a mimeticrather than a semiotic function. Here, narratological toolsthat pinpoint this distinction are not only helpful for un-derstanding the characterization device itself, but also itsspecific significance in children's fiction.

One of the common means of characterization that Ifind highly problematic in children's fiction is directspeech. One would assume that it is simple and explicit,since characters' direct speech presents them immediately,through what they say as well as through how they say it.Yet in children's fiction, direct speech is far more oftenused to carry the plot than as a characterization device.Further, we must once again pay attention to the didacticissues manifest in the relationship between direct speechand narration. Narrator's comments and reported speechmanipulate the reader to interpret the characters' utter-ances in a certain way. Assuming that the narrative au-thority is an adult, we may notice that even when a childcharacter is given a voice through direct speech, there isnormally an adult voice accompanying it and adjusting itto guide the reader toward "correct" understanding. Al-though direct speech may seem a device that presentscharacters in the most immediate manner, there is usu-ally a narrative agency nearby to amend whatever im-pression we as readers might get. Even a specific speechverb, an adverb, or any additional comment will manipu-late our understanding of the character.

Mental representation is the most sophisticated char-acterization device. It allows us to penetrate the charac-ters' mind. This device is uncommon in classic children'snovels, but it is all the more important in books by MichelleMagorian, Nina Bawden, Katherine Paterson, VirginiaHamilton, or Patricia MacLachlan. In books by these writ-ers, the reader is allowed to take part in the innermostthoughts and mental states of characters. Characters be-come fully transparent, in a way that real people can neverbe. On the other hand, even the most complex charactercan never be as multidimensional as a real living person.

The fact that mental representation is uncommon inchildren's literature depends on its implied readers. Weneed certain life experiences to be able to interpret char-acters' thoughts, and still more their unarticulated emo-tions, such as fear, anxiety, longing, or joy. Of course, awriter can simply say "He was anxious" or "She wasscared," but the words "anxious" and "scared" are verysimple labels for complex and contradictory mental states.

Not even a long description can necessarily convey allthe shades of a person's feelings.

Narratology discerns a number of artistic devices todepict inner life or consciousness, including direct speechand thought, reported speech and thought, interior mono-logue, free indirect discourse, simultaneous and retrospec-tive self-narration, and psychonarration.6 In all these forms,the main dilemma for a children's writer is to keep the bal-ance between the two incompatible thrusts: to retain au-thorial control and to convey an authentic portrait of ayoung person's mental state. The most indirect forms, suchas free indirect discourse and psychonarration, are oftenused to manipulate readers, to create an illusion that thetext reflects a character's mind, while it is in fact a narrator'scomments about a character's mind. The specific featureof children's literature is that the narrative voice most of-ten is that of an adult, while the character is a child. Thedifference in cognitive level between the two demands adelicate balance. The best contemporary children's writersmanage to keep this balance, but it is chiefly through de-tailed narratological analysis that we can assess the result.

The wide palette of characterization devices and itsevolution in children's fiction is closely connected to themovement from hero to character, from vehicles of certainactions necessary for the plot toward a fully developedpsychological portrait (see Nikolajeva, Rhetoric 26-48;"Changing"). The use of characterization devices is alsogenre-dependent: we are less likely to discover thoroughcharacterization in formulaic fiction. When children's lit-erature at large is accused of poor characterization, criticsoften gather their examples from Enid BIyton or Roald Dahl,where characters are seldom meant to be anything else thanflat and static. Turning instead to authors such as Patersonor Hamilton, we see a wide scope of complex characteriza-tion devices comparable with the most sophisticated gen-eral fiction.

Perspective

Mental representation also brings about the ques-tion of narrative perspective. Of all narratological ques-tions, this one has been discussed most. Conventional re-search is content with the question, "Who is telling thestory?" The answer is usually simple and unambiguous.Narratology examines instead how the narrative is ma-nipulated through an interaction of the author's, thenarrator's, the character's, and the reader's points of view.7

The conventional way of treating narrative perspec-tive is to state that the story is either told in the third per-son, with an omniscient perspective, or in the first person.It is theoretically possible to have second-person perspec-tive in a story. Narratology views second-person narra-tives as highly unusual and experimental. There is, how-ever, a well-known example in children's literature, the

Beyond the Grammar of the Story π

first chapter of Winnie-the-Pooh. Christopher Robin, who isthe narratee, but also a character in the story, is referred toin second person, as "you": "you said," "you went," andso on. This form should not be confused with the commondirect address or invocation of the reader, for instance,when, in the same chapter, the narrator says: ".. .here [Pooh]is at the bottom and ready to be introduced to you." This"you" is not Christopher Robin, since there is obviously nosense in his being introduced to his own toy; the "you" isthe implied reader of the story, somebody outside the nar-rative. Second-person narration is, however, extremelyunusual (it is dropped in the subsequent chapters of Winnie-the-Pooh), as are other experimental forms, such as first per-son plural (referring to a group of characters as "we" with-out revealing the actual source of utterance, as in The Storyof the Treasure Seekers). We can therefore be satisfied withthe distinction between personal (first-person) and imper-sonal (third-person) narration.

Narratology offers us significantly more precise toolsto examine perspective than conventional text analysis.To begin with, we must discern between the narrativevoice we hear and the point of view, that is, through whoseeyes we see the events (the result of the confusion is thefrequent statements in student papers such as "The storyis told through the eyes of... "). The voice and the point ofview do not necessarily coincide, and in children's litera-ture they seldom coincide, since the narrative voice be-longs to an adult while the point of view is that of a child.Narratology forces us to differentiate who speaks (thenarrator), who sees (the focalizing character, focalizer) andwho is seen (the focalized character, focalizee). The latterdistinction is crucial: a character may stand in the focusof the narrative, yet not necessarily serve as a focalizer. Inchildren's literature this is decisive for the creation of sub-

jectivity, since the subject position offered by the text ismost often governed by the textual point of view. It isusually difficult for child readers (or any unsophisticatedreaders) to liberate themselves from the subjectivity im-posed on them by the text; therefore the choice of narra-tive perspective in children's fiction is in many respectsmore important than in general fiction. Barbara Wall ex-amines in The Narrator's Voice various types of narrators:didactic, authoritative, detached, and empathie. Yet Walloverlooks the fact that all these voices can be combined

with a range of points of view, external and internal, lit-eral and transferred, fixed and variable.

Let us, however, first take a closer look at the narra-tive voice: who speaks. An essential question is the dis-tance between the narrator and the narrative. Irrespec-tive of whether the narrator is covert or refers to himselfin the first person, he (I am using the masculine pronounfor convenience's sake, without any implications) can ei-ther tell the story in retrospect, after the events, or moreor less simultaneously, as the events unfold. Even an adult

personal narrator telling about his own childhood (Jim inTreasure Island) has a distance to the narrated events andcan restructure them, and comment on his own actionsfrom a vaster life experience (as is often the case in adultnovels describing the protagonist's childhood, such as JaneEyre). The difference between personal and impersonalnarration is in this case less important than the distancebetween the narrator and the story.

As far as the narrator's presence in the narrative isconcerned, the narrator can also be a character, even themain character in his own story, which in itself presents adilemma ("Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of myown life, or whether that station will be held by anybodyelse, these pages must show"). Without going into detail,I would like to point out the complexity of the question ofnarrative voice, which goes far beyond the simple divi-sion between personal and impersonal narration. Thereis a broad continuum between the detached witness-nar-rator and a self-reflective—and in children's literature of-ten solipsistic—personal narrator: "autodiegetic" inGenette's terminology (Genette 245; see further Lanser,The Narrative Act). The former, for instance, Cassie in Rollof Thunder, Hear My Cry, mainly registers the externalevents around her; the latter, like Sal in Walk Two Moons,is focused on her own emotions.

The picture becomes still more complicated when weadd the point of view; that is, when we not only examinewho speaks, but also who sees. The concept of the point ofview is used in narratology both in a literal and transferredsense. When we share a child character's point of view, it ismostly the literal perspective: we see what the child sees.The transferred point of view, that is, the child's under-standing of what she sees, the child's thoughts and opin-ions, can be problematic. Can an adult writer render achild's state of mind without sounding false? Narratologistsoften use Henry James' What Maisie Knew as a unique ex-ample of a description of a child's naive and innocent per-ception. In this novel, we share both Maisie's literal andtransferred points of view. Adult readers can presumablyliberate themselves from the imposed point of view of thetext and understand that things are not really like Maisiesees them. Since narratologists seldom know anythingabout children's literature, they have no idea that this sup-posedly unique device is a rule rather than an exception inchildren's books, ranging from Curious George and Ramonathe Pest to The Giver and Bridge to Terabithia. On the otherhand, young readers are mostly just as naive and inexperi-enced as the child protagonists. The interaction of the vari-ous points of view becomes extremely intricate. Harriet theSpy is a good example of a children's novel in which read-ers are supposed to see through the protagonist's imma-ture perception; however, I am not sure that they alwaysdo. A very young child will be as confused as Pooh discov-ering that the character has been following his own tracks.

12 Children's Literature Association Quarterly

Close readings of children's novels may in many cases re-veal that the author is indeed using a double (or at best,dual) address while seemingly the events are presentedfrom a child's perspective.

The concept of focalization helps us to examine therelationship between the narrator and the character or char-acters through whose eyes and minds we perceive theevents. Once again: since the narrator in a children's bookis most often an adult, while the character is a child, if writ-ers want to create an illusion of an authentic child perspec-tive, they must pretend that the narrator does not know orunderstand more than the focalizing character. In this case,too, the difference between personal and impersonal nar-ration is of less importance. In internal focalization, we takepart of the character's thoughts and feelings in the sameway as in a personal narrative, and sometimes even better.It can work better because a personal narrator who is achild telling the story more or less as it unfolds, in simulta-neous personal narration, lacks both verbal and cognitiveskills to articulate his emotions. An adult narrative agencyfocalizing young characters can verbalize their thoughtsand feelings for them. I find it indicative of the potential ofthis form that Paterson prefers impersonal narration indepicting her characters' internal lives.

However, children's literature does have its limita-tions, dependent on its implied readers. Not even everyadult reader is capable of and will enjoy reading Ulysses orFinnegans Wake, and an attempt to directly convey a child'sflow of thoughts in a children's book would probably re-sult in an artistic failure. Just as children in real life needadults in order to survive, it is part of the poetics ofchildren's literature to use an adult narrative agency to pro-vide young readers with at least some guidance. When thisconvention is abandoned, then either we are not dealingwith children's literature any more, or it is indeed an artis-tic failure. It would feel alien for me to propagate for a re-turn to a conventional, authoritative narrative voice. Yetnarratological studies of perspective in children's literaturereveal how writers manage to achieve something thatnarratologists have judged as impossible: a rendering of anaive perspective without losing psychological depth orverbal richness. I have mentioned in several previous stud-ies that many narratologists make use of the same example:Benjy in The Sound and the Fury (Booth 152; Scholes andKellogg 200; Cohn 250ff; Rimmon-Kenan 100). If they readsome children's books, they would not lack examples. Ihave, for instance, shown how ironic and nonironic narra-tion works in the children's novels by MacLachlan andPaterson (Nikolajeva "The Child"; "The Art").

Temporality

Finally, let us have a look at temporality. The usualquestion concerning time in fiction is "When does the ac-

tion take place?" At best, it can also be "How long doesthe story take?" The narratological question is "How arethe temporal structures of the discourse organized in re-lation to the temporal structures of the story?" PaulRicouer was among the first to draw our attention to thedecisive difference between story time and narrative time,which is closely intertwined with the question of perspec-tive. In Genette's analytical model, temporality holds thecentral place and is discussed together with such aspectsas mood and voice. The three components of temporal-ity—order (in which events are narrated in relation to thestory), duration (how narrative time relates to story time),and frequency (how many times an event is narrated inrelation to how many times it happens in the story)—ac-quire a special significance in children's literature.

Many adult novels start in medias res and then retrackto give some background information about the events al-ready narrated. Most classical children's novels presentevents chronologically, the way they happened. This struc-ture is considered suitable for children, because especiallyvery young children may have problems reconstructing theactual flow of events unless they are rendered chronologi-cally. It is also believed that children need very clear causalrelations in a narrative. Theoretically, there may exist narra-tives that indeed present events exactly as they have hap-pened. But even though a narrative basically follows the plot,there are always small deviations. For instance, first we learnthat Anne Shirley is going to live with Matthew and Marilla,and then we learn what happened to her before. In contem-porary children's and especially young adult fiction, it hasalso become common (not to say banal) to make use of re-peated and intricate flashbacks, interplay of different tem-poral levels, and other complex temporal patterns. Walk TwoMoons is a prominent but far from unique example.

For analyzing temporal patterns in contemporarychildren's novels, we need relevant terminology, whichnarratology provides for us (see Genette 33-160). We canobserve some interesting differences between temporalstructures in children's fiction as compared to the main-stream. Genette remarks that prolepses, or flashforwards,are rare in literature outside myth and religious prophe-cies (which is not quite true; one contemporary main-stream author fond of prolepses is John Irving). Inchildren's literature, prolepses are common, taking theform of "as we soon shall see" or "as I learned already thenext day" in which the reader is encouraged to pay atten-tion to a certain event that may turn out to be importantlater. A prolepsis can also determine the narrative situa-tion, creating a distance between the narrator and the nar-rative: "In after years when the pain had gone out of theirrecollection, Emily thought they were the most preciousof her memories" (Emily of New Moon 19); or "Years after-wards, when he was an old man, Digory said he had neverin all his life known a woman so beautiful" (The Magician's

Beyond the Grammar of the Story 13

Nephew 48-49). Again such observations tell us somethingabout the nature of children's fiction.

Concerning duration, we can maintain that the plotof a children's book cannot take many years, as is the caseof David Copperfield or Great Expectations, which followtheir characters from early childhood into adulthood. Sucha long plot would lie beyond a young reader's compre-hension. The beginning of Mansfield Park is not unlikesome famous children's books, such as Heidi or Anne ofGreen Gables: a poor girl comes to stay with relatives orfoster parents. However, while Mansfield Park immediatelypresents a gap of five years in Fanny Price's life, until sheis grown up and marriageable and therefore can partici-pate in the adult issues, half of Anne of Green Gables de-picts Anne's first weeks in her new home, whereby eachevent is described in detail, since it is important for theyoung protagonist. Thereafter, the plot is accelerated, andthe speed of the story is varied; some episodes are de-scribed minutely, while long periods can be dismissed injust one sentence: "A year has passed." Speed and dura-tion in a children's book are essential aesthetic elements.

In Ulysses, the story takes merely one day: time is stretched,since the novel depicts characters in a critical moment oftheir lives. It has become more common for children'sbooks to have short duration, as compared to classic bookssuch as Anne of Green Gables or Heidi, which take severalyears. By studying duration we notice some overallchanges in the aesthetics of children's literature. It is ap-parently more important for today's authors to catch aturning point in a young person's life than to follow himor her during many years. As in many other aspects, TheCatcher in the Rye set the short duration pattern for laternovels. We would, however, not notice such changes inchildren's literature with conventional methods.

Duration is an important narrative element since itdenotes the rhythm or tempo of the text. Most often, storytime in fiction is longer than discourse time. Yet by meansof descriptions, deviations, and comments, by narratingthe same event several times, by telling about events tak-ing place simultaneously at different places, discoursetime can be expanded to twice the story time or more. It isvery common in adult fiction, but as yet rare in children'sbooks. In early children's fiction, it was more common tohave narrative summaries, especially in domestic fictionthat often covers a large time span (besides Anne of GreenGables, we can recall Little Women or What Katy Did). Mod-ern children's novels usually have a much shorter timespan, sometimes just a few days or even hours, thereforethere are fewer summaries and more detailed scenes. Ac-cording to many narratologists, this observation is trueabout fiction in general: the abstraction of classical litera-ture (summary) is contrasted to the expressivity of mod-ern literature (scene). The dominance of scene over sum-mary can be regarded as a quality criterion.

There are a number of preconceived opinions aboutwhich temporal pattern is best for children. It has oftenbeen stated that children prefer dialogue to description—a statement also found in fiction ("what is the use of abook," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversa-tions?") If we use narratological terminology for the fivepatterns of duration (scene, summary, pause, ellipse, andstretch), such statements mean that scenes dominate oversummaries and descriptive pauses are avoided. To a cer-tain degree it is true, for various reasons. The younger theimplied audience, the truer it is. Writers may sense intu-itively what is confirmed by psychological studies, thatthe young child lives "here and now," that details areimportant, and so on. Children's fiction tries to reflectchildren's perception of events.

Descriptive pauses slow down the plot. In a plot-oriented narrative, where all events lead toward the cli-max in a rising tempo, a pause would be disturbing. Youngreaders tend to skip descriptions in order to arrive morequickly at dramatic events. On the other hand, in a char-acter-oriented narrative, a long description of a character'sthoughts and feelings is not only well-motivated, but canbe a decisive element of the plot. Ellipses are common inepisodic narrative, where they can be explicit ("Annikawoke up early next morning") or implicit ("It soon be-came known throughout the little town..."). "Soon" canhere be several weeks; it is, however, unusual to have el-lipses covering a time span of many years. To fill a gap ofseveral weeks is easy for young readers; in Pippi's case,the ellipsis is probably filled with all the exciting gamesthat the readers can imagine taking place in VillaVillekulla. To fill a gap of several years is very difficult fora young child, whose experience of time is limited. Stretchis often used to describe dramatic, emotionally-chargedepisodes, for instance, the sailing accident in AidanChambers's Dance on My Grave.

Finally, concerning frequency, while Genette claimsthat the iterative (telling once about recurrent events) isunique for Marcel Proust (Genette 116ff), it seems to be avery common device in children's fiction, acquiring a spe-cial significance, since the iterative reflects a child's per-ception of time as cyclical, non-linear, where recurrentevents and routines—Christmas, summer holidays, birth-days—emphasize the eternal cycle rather than the linearflow of time. The ending of The House at Pooh Corner evokesa sense of eternity by stressing the recurrent action: "Wher-ever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way,in that enchanted place on top of the Forest a little boyand his Bear will always be playing." The ending of thethird Pippi volume has the same significance: "She willalways be there." It is not only the global perception oftime that makes children's writers use the iterative. Achild's life is apparently—or is perceived by the child to be—more regular and regulated than an adult's life, therefore

14 Children's Literature Association Quarterly

Cover detail from Do You Know PippiLongstocking? by Astrid Lingren with

pictures by Ingrid Nyman (1999)

recurrent patternsare of greater sig-nificance, which isreflected in thestories. The itera-tive does not de-scribe an eventthat is happeningor has happened,but an event thathappens all overagain. Some lan-guages have spe-cial grammaticaltenses for this phe-

nomenon. Otherwise, the iterative can be indicated bysuch words as "often," "sometimes," "several times," "ev-ery Sunday," "during summers," and so on (seeNikolajeva, From Mythic 31-35).

The intricate temporal patterns are still unusual inchildren's novels, and the elaborate narratological termi-nology may feel superfluous. However, there is a generaltendency in contemporary children's fiction toward com-plexity and sophistication, which includes complex tem-porality (see Nikolajeva, Children's Literature; "Exit").Narratological approaches can help us in assessing thisgrowing complexity.

Conclusion: Toward new horizons!

Every new theoretical direction is only legitimate ifit allows us to disclose such dimensions in literary textsthat we would not be able to discover with other meth-ods. We have recently seen how children's literature re-search has reached new depth as it has borrowed analyti-cal tools from two separate, but in some respects similar,areas: the feminist and the postcolonial criticism. Both di-rections have taught us to read literary texts from the pointof view of a marginalized social group. Children in oursociety are also marginalized and oppressed. With toolsfrom feminist and postcolonial theories, we have learnedto discern between conservative and subversive elementsin children's books, classic as well as modern. This hasfar-reaching consequences for our field, as we are nowviewing children's novels in terms of "power and repres-sion" (Trites) rather than "a promise of happiness" (Inglis).

In its turn, narrative theory has given us tools toanalyze in detail how texts are constructed, on amacrolevel as well as a microlevel, and to understand whycertain devices work well in children's books while oth-ers do not. It has also facilitated a historical comparison,which pinpoints not only changes in themes and values,but also the profound changes in the aesthetic form ofchildren's literature.

It would seem that the structure of stories has beenstudied thoroughly, both with conventional methods andwith the assistance of more advanced theories. It wouldperhaps further appear that with the emergence ofpostmodern literature, plots as textual elements have moreor less lost their significance and thus their interest for ascholar of literature. Yet studies such as Peter Brooks' Read-ing for the Plot and some others clearly show that plots, aswell as characters, have survived poststructural denigra-tion, and also that there are many exciting methods leftfor discussing the structure of literary works. Brooks com-bines a structural approach with a psychoanalytical oneand thus goes beyond the plot surface to investigate theinterdependence of plot and intention, and not least, theway characters function in the plot. The weakness of earlystructural studies was that they examined text composi-tion as such, without connection to other text components.By expanding the study of narrative to such elements astemporality and perspective we can considerably increaseour understanding of the ways literary texts are made.The three volumes of Paul Ricoeur's Time and Narrativeespecially open some new horizons. These aspects maybe of little value when we are dealing with simple,straightforward narratives of traditional children's litera-ture, but are indispensable as soon as we set off to exploremore complex, contemporary children's novels with mul-tiple plots and narrative levels. Some recent studies ofchildren's literature have focused on the role of language(Stephens, McCallum), or the manipulation of the read-ers' interpretative strategies by means of intertextualityand metafictive expectations (Stephens and McCallum).This direction seems extremely promising. From the ex-amination of structural elements we can proceed to pos-ing questions of exactly how narrative elements work asbearers of psychological qualities, social values, and ide-ology. By combining purely narratological studies withother theories and methods we may disclose the mutualdependence of form and content, which structuralism andnarratology traditionally neglect.

Last but not least, we can return to the question ofthe specifics of children's literature as an art form. SusanLanser (Fictions) represents a new direction of inquiryoperating on the crossroads between narrative theory andfeminist theory, which she herself has labeled "feministnarratology." Its objective is to investigate the interdepen-dence of gender and narrative structure in a literary work.Just as children's literature criticism at large has gathereda number of valuable analytical tools from feminist theory,we may be witnessing the emergence of "children's-lit-erature-specific" narratology. Perhaps eventually we willbe able to answer the tantalizing question of exactly whatmakes Alice in Wonderland a great children's book.

Beyond the Grammar of the Story 15

NOTES

1. See, for instance, Hunt, "Narrative," "Necessary Misreadings";McGillis, "The Embrace"; Wall; Golden; Otten; Goodenough;McCallum; Cadden; Wyile; Nikolajeva, "Imprints," Rhetoric.There are also two earlier special issues of professional journalsdevoted to narrative theory and children's literature, Studies inthe Literary Imagination 18.2 (1985) and Children's Literature Asso-ciation Quarterly 15.2 (Summer 1990).2. I deliberately exclude the vast and well-developed area ofreader-response studies, even though they naturally are closelyconnected with narratology, especially in the examinations ofthe implied reader. See Benton; Chambers; Hunt, Criticism 65-99; McGillis, Nimble 177-200; Stephens 47-83.3. See, for example, Umberto Eco's famous essay on the struc-ture of the James Bond novels, or John G. Cawelty's study offormulaic fiction. In children's literature research, formal meth-ods have been applied, for instance, to The Tale of Peter Rabbit(Neumeyer) or the Harry Potter books (Zipes 176f). See alsoMcGillis, Nimble 27-48,129-51.

4. Among the more profound theoretical studies of literary char-acters are Harvey; Hochman; Doherty; Petruso. In children's lit-erature research, this question has never been thoroughly theo-rized, except for my own book The Rhetoric of Character inChildren's Literature (which is of course why I felt compelled towrite it). For an overview of character theories, see 3-25.5. The terms used to describe the approaches include open vs.closed (Chatman), mimetic vs. semiotic (Rimmon-Kenan), mi-metic vs. non-mimetic (Docherty), or mimetic vs. thematic(Phelan). In my examination of character, I use the terms mi-metic and semiotic approaches (Rhetoric 7-24).6. Most studies of mental representation in literature take theirdeparture in speech act theory (Austin; Searle; Pratt). DorritCohn's Transparent Minds provides perhaps the best and mostsystematic overview of the various modes of mental represen-tation. See further Hamburger; Banfield; Fludernik. On the spe-cific functions of these forms in children's fiction see Nikolajeva,Rhetoric 241-67; "Imprints."7. The various aspects of narrative perspective, including voiceand point of view, have been investigated in most standardworks on narrative; see Booth; Genette; Chatman; Rimmon-Kenan; Lanser; Bakhtin; BaI. For the most recent developmentsin the field see Chatman and van Peer.

WORKS CITED

Aristotle. Poetics. Montreal: McGill-Queen's UP, 1997.

Austin, J. L. How to Do Things with Words. New York: Oxford UP,1962.

Bakhtin, Mikhail. "Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity." Artand Answerability: Early Philosophical Essays. Austin: U of TexasP, 1990.4-256.

BaI, Mieke. Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative.2nd ed. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1997.

in the Language of Fiction. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982.Benton, Michael. "Reader-Response Criticism." InternationalCompanion Encyclopedia of Children's Literature. Ed. Peter Hunt.London: Routledge, 1996. 71-88.Bloom, Harold. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. NewYork: Riverhead, 1998.

Booth, Wayne C. The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: U of Chicago P,1961.

Brooks, Peter. Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narra-tive. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1984.Cadden, Mike. "The Irony of Narration in the Young Adult Novel. "Children's Literature Association Quarterly 25 (2000): 146-54.Cawelty, John G. Adventure, Mystery and Romance: Formula Sto-ries as Art and Popular Culture. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1976.Chambers, Aidan. "The Reader in the Book." Booktalk: OccasionalWriting on Literature and Children. London: Bodley Head, 1985.34-58.

Chatman, Seymour. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure inFiction and Film. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1978.

Chatman, Seymor, and Willie van Peer, eds. New Perspectives onNarrative Perpective. Albany: SUNY P, 2001.Cohn, Dorrit. Transparent Minds. Narrative Modes for PresentingConsciousness in Fiction. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1978.

Docherty, Thomas. Reading (Absent) Character: Toward a Theory ofCharacterization in Fiction. Oxford: Clarendon, 1983.

Eco, Umberto. "Narrative Structures in Fleming." The Role of theReader. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1979.144-72.Fludernik, Monika. The Fictions of Language and the Languages ofFiction: The Linguistic Representation of Speech and Consciousness.London: Routledge, 1993.Forster, E. M. Aspects of the Novel. 1927. San Diego: Harcourt,Brace, 1985.

Genette, Gérard. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca,NY: Cornell UP, 1980.

Golden, Joanne M. The Narrative Symbol in Childhood Literature:Exploration in the Construction of Text. Berlin: Mouton, 1990.Goodenough, Elizabeth, et al., eds. Infant Tongues: The Voices ofthe Child in Literature. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1994.Hamburger, Käte. The Logic of Literature. 2nd ed. Bloomington:Indiana UP, 1973.

Harvey, W. J. Character and the Novel. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1965.Hochman, Baruch. Character in Literature. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985.

Hunt, Peter. "Narrative Theory and Children's Literature."Children's Literature Association Quarterly 9 (1984-85): 191-94.—. "Necessary Misreadings: Directions in Narrative Theory forChildren's Literature." Studies in the Literary Imagination 18.2(1985): 107-21.

Banfield, Ann. Unspea^le Sentences: Narration and Representation —. Criticism, Theory and Children's Literature. London: Blackwell, 1992.

16 Children's Literature Association Quarterly

Inglis, Fred. The Promise of Happiness: The Value and Meaning inChildren's Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1981.James, Henry. The Art of the Novel: Critical Prefaces. 1884. New York:Scribner, 1934.

—. Theory of Fiction. Ed. James E. Miller, Jr. Lincoln: U of NebraskaP, 1972.

Kermode, Frank. The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory ofFiction. London: Oxford UP, 1968.

Knights, L. C. "How Many Children Had Lady Macbeth?" Explo-rations (1965): 1-39.Lanser, Susan Sniader. The Narrative Act: Point of View in Prose Fic-tion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1981.

—. Fictions of Authority: Women Writers and Narrative Voice. Ithaca,NY: Cornell UP, 1992.

Lewis. C. S. The Magician's Nephew. 1955. Harmondsworth: Puf-fin, 1963.

McCallum, Robyn. Ideologies of Identity in Adolescent Fiction: TheDialogic Construction of Subjectivity. New York: Garland, 1999.McGillis, Roderick. "The Embrace: Narrative Voice and Children'sBooks." Canadian Children's Literature 63 (1991): 24-40.

—. The Nimble Reader: Literary Theory and Children's Literature. NewYork: Twayne, 1996.Montgomery, Lucy Maud. Emily of New Moon. New York: Ban-tam, 1993.

Morson, Gary Saul. Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows of Time.New Haven: Yale UP, 1994.

Neumeyer, Peter. "A Structural Approach to the Study of Litera-ture for Children." Elementary English 44 (1977): 883-87.Nikolajeva, Maria. "The Art of Self-deceit: Narrative Strategies inKatherine Paterson's Novels." Bridges for the Young: The Fiction ofKatherine Paterson. Ed Joel Chaston and Sarah Smedman. Lanham,MD: Scarecrow, 2003.10-33.

—. "The Changing Aesthetics of Character in Children's Fiction."Style 35 (2001): 430-53.—. "The Child as Self-Deceiver: Narrative Strategies in KatherinePaterson's and Patricia MachLachlan's Novels." Papers 7.1 (1997):5-15.

—. Children's Literature Comes of Age: Towards a New Aesthetic. NewYork: Garland, 1996.

—. "Exit Children's Literature?" The Lion and the Unicorn 22.2(1998): 221-36.

—. From Mythic to Linear: Time in Children's Literature. Lanham,MD: Scarecrow, 2000.

—. "Imprints of the Mind: The Depiction of Consciousness inChildren's Literature." Children's Literature Association Quarterly26 (2001): 173-87.—. The Rhetoric of Character in Children's Literature. Lanham, MD:Scarecrow, 2002.

Nodelman, Perry. The Pleasures of Children's Literature. New York:

Longman, 1992.—. "Pleasure and Genre: Speculations on the Characteristics ofChildren's Fiction." Children's Literature 28 (2000): 1-14.

Otten, Charlotte von, and Gary D. Smith, eds. The Voice of the Nar-rator in Children's Literature: Insights from Writers and Critics. NewYork: Greenwood, 1989.

Petruso, Thomas F. Life Made Real: Characterization in the Novel sinceProust and ¡oyce. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1991.Phelan, James. Reading People, Reading Plots: Character, Progression,and the Interpretations of Narrative. Chicago: U of Chicago, 1989.Pratt, Mary Louise. Toward a Speech Act Theory of Literary Discourse.Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1977.Prince, Gerald. A Dictionary of Narratology. Lincoln: U of NebraskaP, 1987.

Propp, Vladimir. Morphology of the Folktale. Austin: U of Texas P, 1968.Ricoeur, Paul. Time and Narrative. Vols. 1-3. Chicago: U of ChicagoP, 1984-88.

Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith. Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poet-ics. London: Routledge, 1983.Scholes, Robert and Robert Kellogg. The Nature of Narrative. Lon-don: Oxford UP, 1966.

Searle, John R. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language.Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1969.Shavit, Zohar. Poetics of Children's Literature. Athens: U of GeorgiaP, 1986.

—. "The Double Attribution of Texts for Children and How itAffects Writing for Children." Transcending Boundaries: Writing fora Dual Audience of Children and Adults. Ed. Sandra L. Beckett. NewYork: Garland, 1999. 83-99.

Stephens, John. Language and Ideology in Children's Fiction. Lon-don: Longman, 1992.Stephens, John, and Robyn McCallum. Retelling Stories, FramingCulture: Traditional Story and Metanarratives in Children's Literature.New York: Garland, 1998.

Todorov, Tzvetan. The Poetics of Prose. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1977.Trites, Roberta Seelinger. Disturbing the Universe: Power and Re-pression in Adolescent Literature. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 2000.Wall, Barbara. The Narrator's Voice: The Dilemma of Children's Fic-tion. London: Macmillan, 1991.

Wyile, Andrea Schwenke. "Expanding the View of First-PersonNarration." Children's Literature in Education 30 (1999): 185-202.

Zipes, Jack. Sf ids and Stones: The Troublesome Success of Children's Ut-eraturefrom Slovenly Peter to Harry Potter. New York: Routledge, 2001.

Maria Nikolajeva is a professor of comparative literature atStockholm University, Sweden, where she teaches children's lit-erature and literary theory. She is the author and editor of nu-merous booL· on children's literature, the most recent of whichis The Rhetoric of Character in Children's Literature (2002).