they were children. In the adult response to such children’s books, ‘wishfulness and
enchantment...coexist with an acceptance of adult realities’ (Knoepflmacher 1992:1).
Defining the canon of children’s literature is of great importance to those defining,
validating and teaching the field because the concept of canonicity implies the kind of
authority empowered to exclude as well as include certain works (Knoepflmacher 1992:1).
But in trying to establish the canon, it is important to recognise what one critic and
teacher calls ‘the historical and ideological (cultural, political, sexual, racial) relativity of
the definition’ of the concept (Stahl 1992:13). Canons of literature, including children’s
literature, become centres of debate and ideological struggle. For example, cultural,
ideological and historical considerations clearly enter into the constitution of the various
national canons of children’s literature such as the ‘British canon’ or the ‘American
canon’, for such terms are ‘a means by which a certain version of reality validates a
given power arrangement’ (Ronda 1992:32).
Canons provide cultural frameworks for selecting and excluding works of children’s
literature and, as such, they are historically and socially constructed, and many ‘speak
for the values and interests of relatively well-to-do educated whites, males, Christians,
northern Europeans’ (Griffith and Frey 1992:23). Again, the argument that ‘classics’
such as The Wind in the Willows, or Peter Pan ‘revolve so imperiously around questions
of male self-sufficiency’, may help to account for their status, ‘since the place and
pressure of male domination is itself a canonical topic’. For such critics, reading the
novels in this ideological way is not an argument for ceasing to teach them, but, rather,
that teaching such works should become ‘more responsive to the evolving life of our
culture’. Such responsiveness, it is hoped, will lead teachers to ‘teach the canon more
critically and the noncanon more seriously’ (Griffith and Frey 1992:26, 28, 30).
As literary critical theory developed, so did the variety of critical approaches used in
the teaching of children’s literature in higher education. By the early 1990s, in English-
speaking countries, many courses in children’s literature included genre criticism;
structural analysis; Jungian and other mythic and archetypal criticism; reader-response
criticism; psychoanalytic, feminist and socio-historical criticism; narratology; and the
semiotics and aesthetics of picture books. Some courses specialised in particular areas
of children’s literature: for example: romanticism, the nature of childhood and the
relationship to gender; particular genres of story, for example, fairy tales; or particular
forms of story, for example, fantasy. (For American examples of courses, see Sadler
1992; for British examples, see Watkins 1987 and the series of articles in the journal,
Signal, 1984—).
Children’s literature as a subject for teaching in higher education in the USA
developed considerably after 1969 when the first Modern Language Association seminar
on children’s literature was held. In 1979 children’s literature was given a permanent
place as an MLA group and in 1980, it became an MLA division. Twelve years later, it
was argued that the subject was beginning to be accepted in most English departments
as a valid part of the undergraduate curriculum, although, in fact, many departments
did not accept a course in children’s literature for credit towards the major in English.
The Children’s Literature Association (many of whose members were professionals
working in the field of children’s literature) was founded in the USA in 1973 and twenty
600 TEACHING CHILDREN’S LITERATURE IN HIGHER EDUCATION