However, a developing body of work did start to emerge in the 1960s and 1970s which
was directly concerned with confronting the problem and trying to establish criteria for
judgement. Such work drew on two traditions, the Leavisite tradition in Britain, and the
New Criticism in the USA. Foremost amongst such initiatives was a collection of papers
edited by Egoff et al. (1969). Rosenheim (1969) and Travers (1969), both from that
collection, look specifically to New Critic Northrop Frye’s mythic archetypes, as do Ted
Hughes (1976), and Peter Hunt (1980). Wallace Hildick (1970) and Myles McDowell
(1973) both address the question of the difference in writing for children and writing for
adults, but both resort to Leavisite criteria for evaluating the quality of children’s books,
as does John Rowe Townsend (1971/1990). The Leavisite tradition perhaps reaches its
apogee with Fred Inglis’s The Promise of Happiness. Inglis’s opening sentence directly
quotes the opening of Leavis’s The Great Tradition (1948): ‘The great children’s novelists
are Lewis Carroll, Rudyard Kipling, Francis Hodgson Burnett, Arthur Ransome, William
Mayne, and Philippa Pearce—to stop for a moment at that comparatively safe point on
an uncertain list’ (Inglis 1981:1).
The tradition is not dead. Margery Fisher (1986) for instance, assumes that the
definition of a children’s classic is still essentially unproblematic. William Moebius
(1986/1990) brings similar assumptions to bear upon picture books, and Peter Hunt’s
book on Arthur Ransome is still largely rooted in Leavisite practice in its judgements of
quality and value (Hunt 1992).
One of the features of the tradition is its refusal to address questions of value at a
theoretical level. Here is Townsend exemplifying the point.
We find in fact that the literary critics, both modern and not-so-modern, are
reluctant to pin themselves down to theoretical statements. In the introduction to
Determinations (1934), F.R.Leavis expresses the belief that ‘the way to forward true
appreciation of literature and art is to examine and discuss it’; and again, ‘out of
agreement or disagreement with particular judgements of value a sense of relative
value in the concrete will define itself, and without this, no amount of talk in the
abstract is worth anything’.
Townsend 1971/1990:66The values in question can be culled from a variety of sources. F.R. Leavis (1955) talks
of ‘intelligence’, ‘vitality’, ‘sensibility’, ‘depth, range and subtlety in the presentment of
human experience’, ‘achieved creation’ ‘representative significance’. Inglis (1981) talks of
‘sincerity’ ‘dignity’, ‘integrity’, ‘honesty’, ‘authenticity’, ‘fulfilment’, ‘freedom’, ‘innocence’,
‘nation’, ‘intelligence’, ‘home’, ‘heroism’, ‘friendship’, ‘history’. And Peter Hunt tells us
that the virtues of Arthur Ransome are ‘family, honour, skill, good sense, responsibility
and mutual respect’, and ‘the idea of place’ (Hunt 1992:86). All of these terms and
formulations are offered by their various authors as if they are essentially
unproblematic, and they are thus rendered as common sense, naturalised and hidden in
the discourse, and not raised for examination. We may have little difficulty, however, in
recognising a liberal humanist consensus which runs through them, even if one or two
of Inglis’s choices are somewhat idiosyncratic. Nowhere, however, are we able to raise
IDEOLOGY 43