03722nam a22005415i 4500 978-3-031-41382-7 DE-He213 20251030112029.0 cr nn 008mamaa 240506s2024 sz | s |||| 0|eng d 9783031413827 978-3-031-41382-7 10.1007/978-3-031-41382-7 doi PZ4.2-90 DSY bicssc LIT009000 bisacsh DSY thema Laing, Roisín. author. aut http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/aut 76430 The Precocious Child in Victorian Literature and Culture [electronic resource] : Development and Selfhood from Darwin to Freud / by Roisín Laing. 1st ed. 2024. Cham : Springer Nature Switzerland : Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024. X, 279 p. online resource. text txt rdacontent computer c rdamedia online resource cr rdacarrier text file PDF rda Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture, 2634-6508 Chapter 1-Nineteenth-Century Models of Development: Precocity Before and After Darwin -- Chapter 2-The Child: Non-Precocity in Autobiography -- Chapter 3- Lies and Imagination: Precocity in Children’s Literature -- Chapter 4- The Precocious Child in Victorian Culture: Precocity in Fantasy and in Reality -- Chapter 5- Twentieth-Century Models of Development: Precocity from Darwin to Freud. This book examines representations of precocity in Victorian textual culture – canonical literature, children’s fiction, scientific texts, and writing by children – to argue that precocity challenges the idea of progress. It considers how practitioners of literature and science from Wordsworth to Freud represented human development, and the way in which Darwin’s “non-progressive model of evolution” troubled the existing model of progression by stages (from childhood inexperience to adult maturity and understanding). Roisín Laing argues that the precocious child undermines the equation of growth with progress, and thereby facilitates other ways of imagining both individual and species development. The idea represented by the precocious child in Victorian culture – that the adult is not necessarily an improvement on the child, the human not necessarily an improvement on the ape – still troubles us today. Roisín Laing is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the English Studies Department and the Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies at Durham University, UK. She has published on childhood and nineteenth-century culture in several essay collections and leading journals including The Journal of Victorian Culture and The Henry James Review. Children's literature. Literature, Modern 19th century. European literature. Children's Literature. Nineteenth-Century Literature. European Literature. SpringerLink (Online service) Springer Nature eBook Printed edition: 9783031413810 Printed edition: 9783031413834 Printed edition: 9783031413841 Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture, 2634-6508 68844 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41382-7 ZDB-2-LCM ZDB-2-SXL 59669 59669