"“Girls Like it Most” Challenging Gendered Canons and Paracanons in the case of The Secret Garden"

TY - CHAP

T1 - "“Girls Like it Most” Challenging Gendered Canons and Paracanons in the case of The Secret Garden"

AU - Waller, Alison

PY - 2017

Y1 - 2017

N2 - In this chapter Alison Waller asks how reading histories might be used to reform ideas of canonicity in children’s literature, focusing on gendered responses and using Frances Hodgeson Burnett’s well-known girls’ story The Secret Garden (1911) as a case study. Waller examines The Secret Garden as it has functioned as a ‘paracanonical’ text, one that has exerted a peculiar influence over adult readers who remember reading it in childhood. Setting personal memories included in feminist criticism of the text against accounts of remembering and rereading created by adult men in interview with the researcher, Waller probes canonical interpretations of Burnett’s work and argues that there is an alternative story of male readerly engagement that is worth recovering.

AB - In this chapter Alison Waller asks how reading histories might be used to reform ideas of canonicity in children’s literature, focusing on gendered responses and using Frances Hodgeson Burnett’s well-known girls’ story The Secret Garden (1911) as a case study. Waller examines The Secret Garden as it has functioned as a ‘paracanonical’ text, one that has exerted a peculiar influence over adult readers who remember reading it in childhood. Setting personal memories included in feminist criticism of the text against accounts of remembering and rereading created by adult men in interview with the researcher, Waller probes canonical interpretations of Burnett’s work and argues that there is an alternative story of male readerly engagement that is worth recovering.

M3 - Chapter

SP - 155

EP - 172

BT - Canon Constitution and Canon Change in Children’s Literature

A2 - Kümmerling-Meibauer , Bettina

A2 - Müller, Anja

PB - Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group

CY - London

ER -