However, despite the peripheral treatment of parents in children’s literature, this paper argues that the absolute necessity of parental care still remains for the child “inside” and “outside” the text. Children’s literature is traditionally embedded within the paradoxical nature of the adult/child binary and it is common for writers of children’s literature to discard the adult and centralize the child. In this leap, the writers of children’s literature have deviated from the established structure of “home-away-home” in which the child is lost to a condition when either or both parents are missing. But in a strange reversal of this pattern in contemporary Indian children’s literature, it is now common that the child is present but the parent or parents are missing. Therefore, in traditional narratives, if a child is lost, a child is lost to his or her parents, and so are the parents lost to the child. In the case of the “lost child,” the child is lost but the parents/family are together, and for the lost child it is s/he who is alone and has lost his or her parents. This paper explores the transition from the theme of the “lost child” to that of “lost parent(s)” in children’s literature in India.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
June 2023
Categories |