The Case of Peter Pan: Or the Impossibility of Children's Fiction (New Cultural Studies) by Jacqueline Rose

by Jacqueline Rose

Peter Pan, Jacqueline Rose contends, forces us to question what it is we are doing in the endless production and dissemination of children's fiction. In a preface, written for this edition, Rose considers some of Peter Pan's new guises and their implications. From Spielberg's Hook, to the lesbian production of the play at the London Drill Hall in 1991, to debates in the English House of Lords, to a newly claimed status as the icon of transvestite culture, Peter Pan continues to demonstrate its bizarre renewability as a cultural fetish of our times.

Genres: Nonfiction, Theory, Literary Criticism, Academic, Criticism, Lit Crit, Literature

Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Jacqueline Rose, FBA (born 1949, London) is a British academic who is currently Professor of Humanities at the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities.

Rose was born into a non-practicing Jewish family. Her elder sister was the philosopher Gillian Rose. Jacqueline Rose is known for her work on the relationship between psychoanalysis, feminism and literature. She is a graduate of St Hilda's College, Oxford and gained her higher degree (maîtrise) from the Sorbonne, Paris and her doctorate from the University of London.

Her book Albertine, a novel from 2001, is a feminist variation on Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu.

She is best known for her critical study on the life and work of American poet Sylvia Plath, The Haunting of Sylvia Plath, published in 1991. In the book, Rose offers a postmodernist feminist interpretation of Plath's work, and criticises Plath's husband Ted Hughes and other editors of Plath's writing. Rose describes the hostility she experienced from Hughes and his sister (who acts as literary executor to Plath's estate) including threats received from Hughes about some of Rose's analysis of Plath's poem "The Rabbit Catcher". The Haunting of Sylvia Plath was critically acclaimed, and itself subject to a famous critique by Janet Malcolm in her book The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.

Rose is a regular broadcaster on and contributor to the London Review of Books.

Rose's States of Fantasy was the inspiration for composer Mohammed Fairouz's Double Concerto of the same title.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[GwenViolet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Less a book about children (instead like the paradoxical absence of children within children's literature) and more about the inherently contradictory/defuse nature of language, which becomes particularly stark when we project these virtues onto children through literary production.

Very, very good

[Titas Bose · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoughts. So many thoughts. Is the intended child reader a fantasy that is built by children's literature — a fantasy that unites the search for cultural origins, and a pure literal language (both objects being equally mythical)?? Thoughts.

[Henry Sharpe · Rating 2 out of 5]

i wanted this to make fun of YA readers more but its from the 80s. need new edition but about harry potter. willa im sorry i left the copy you got me on a plane but i finished it with a pdf.

[Kristina · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tenacious inquiry into the fantasy of childhood in children's fiction. Rose skillfully unpicks the multiple layers of meaning in the various renderings of Peter Pan. Examining the language and mythology of childhood, Rose draws out poignant and (still) relevant questions about the institutions that help sustain children's fiction as well as our own relationship with "language, sexuality and death".

The overabundance of references to Freud did irritate my occasionally. Oh well, 1984.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone with an interest in children's literature, or the way children are represented in literature, should read this book. It raises a lot of issues and questions that have become foundational to studying children's literature, and it is an extremely insightful, intriguing, and interesting analysis.

[Ann Bjerregaard · Rating 3 out of 5]

While this is a seminal work in Children's literature criticism and some of Rose's points were really interesting and well-argued, I found her writing rather impenetrable, which is a shame as it made her arguments somewhat difficult to follow.

[Ioulia]

Read this for my final paper: I'm not familiar with Rose's work but I like how readable her work is and her closer look on one of my favourite tales. Definitely interesting to read

[Jasmine · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was only really half useful to me, which is slightly disappointing seeing as I want to write my essay on Peter Pan.

[CJ Forneste · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this book is more enjoyable after reading through Perry Nodelman's critical theories and critiques on Rose.

[Violet · Rating 3 out of 5]

entirely too many references to freud--a consequence, i suppose, of it having been first written in 1984--but it was an interesting read. dense prose.

[Brody Eldridge]

i wonder what rose thinks of the hunger games

[Cara Byrne · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a smart book that complicates "children's literature," as Rose argues: “There is no child behind the category of ‘children’s fiction’, other than the one which the category itself sets in place, the one which it needs to believe is there for its own purposes” (10). While analyzing Peter Pan - in all of its variations - is at the heart of her analysis, she brings in other works and philosophical perspectives (Freud, Rousseau, etc.) to complicate popular notions of the child and the role adults play in creating "their" literature. The introduction and 1992 forward were really captivating, but the rest of the book was a bit slow. I'm not sure I will utilize this work much in my studies, but reading her text alongside Nodelman's _Words about Pictures_ really helped me think more about the genre as a whole and conceptions of the child reader.

[Bethan · Rating 3 out of 5]

'Instead of asking what children want, or need, from literature, this book has asked what it is that adults, through literature, want or demand of the child.'

Read as part of my research project on Children's Literature. Interesting and thought provoking, I have a number of pages marked with possible quotes I could use. Possibly a little outdated, as it was first published in 1984, but still holds points that are still valid today.

[Nicola Borasinski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thought-provoking and insightful. A thoroughly interesting piece of critical theory

[Lise · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great study of language, discourse (and society) in Peter Pan

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

it's actually 140 pages. the remaining 60 pages are notes, bibliography & index!
it's not a bad book, but it wasn't what i wanted & it didn't have what i need for my thesis research. wasn't what i was looking for. kind of felt like i wasted my time reading it :/