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.

Extends an area of emergent interest in Victorian childhood studies precocity Draws on a range of Victorian literary genres, from children's literature to evolutionary theory Locates the origin of present-day attitudes towards precocious children in Victorian debates about progress

Autorentext

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 Hendry James Review.

Inhalt

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.

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