Give a polished abstract in 200 words also give Research methodology and aims in academic language with literary jargon for the following
"Unlocking the Voices of Children: The Evolution of Child Narrators in English Literature
Children have indeed appeared in literature since ancient times as characters; however, their voices have been, by and large, ignored or dismissed blithely. Specifically, within the realm of English literature, instances of child narrators are pretty uncommon. In pre-romantic literature, children hardly feature in dialogue or grow into full-fledged “human beings.” (infant tongues) Adult literature appears to neglect them “benignly” like other “domesticated” or marginalized figures. (Infant tongues) In truth, children were considered “deficient” and totally reliant on adults from antiquity through the eighteenth century; therefore, their period of existence was probably of little interest to ancient and medieval authors just for its own reason. (A history of childhood: children and childhood in the west from…) Greek and Roman writers seldom addressed children as a subject, and when they did, they nearly always described them as “subrational, subhuman creatures” outside the purview of “literary interest.” (The child figure in English literature, Robert Pattison p.1) Similarly, during the Renaissance period, literary representation of children was a rarity, as Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Restoration dramatists and poets, akin to their antecedents in ancient Greece and Rome, did not view the “child as a suitable lens” through which to comment on the human condition. (Porter, 1980, p. 2) (Quote in The child narrator and his world in selected works of African and diaspora writers) Despite this, a select few, such as Shakespeare, did include children in his works. However, many scholars concur that the bard’s utilization of children in his plays, such as the little princess in Richard III and the children of Titus Andronicus, was not for the purpose of exploring childhood or child itself but rather for the dramatic effect of highlighting the feelings and emotions evoked by their presence. Robert Pattison’s assertion further emphasizes that the inclusion of innocent children in “Shakespeare’s melodramas heightens the sense of pervasive degeneracy and collapse by creating a purposely heavy-handed and sentimental contrast to the obtuse pervasions of the central action.”
In reality, it wasn’t until the twentieth century that authors began to make “representational attempts to capture the intrinsic qualities of a child, its point of view, its voice, its language, and its rhythms.” (Approaching childhood in contemporary Britain Sandra Dinter). The shift in perception towards children is largely accredited to the literary figures of the Romantic epoch, who venerated children and viewed them as a vehicle for expressing their discontent with the existing society. Victor Hugo’s bold claim that “Christopher Columbus only discovered America, I discovered the child!” (A history of childhood: children and childhood in the west from…Colin Heywood. Cite 32) reflects the paradigm shift in which childhood was idealized as a sacred state blessed by the Divine and an eternal source of inspiration. (A history of childhood: children and childhood in the west from…Colin heywood). The Romantic writers were fascinated with the concept of the ‘noble savage,’ a figure uncorrupted by societal constraints and possessing an innate, untainted morality. This idea, popularized by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, saw childhood as a time of unspoiled innocence and imagination and posited that the child’s unblemished nature provided a window into the essence of humanity. Consequently, the Romantics’ infatuation with childlike language and perspective inspired them to integrate child narrators and their purity into their literary oeuvre. For instance, Wordsworth and Blake, among others, “used childhood as a critical criterion from which the fallen state of modern society could be measured and condemned- and as a divine resource through which it could possibly be redeemed.” (Critical children: the use of childhood in ten great novels. P 9) Moreover, the child narrator’s presence in Romantic literature served as a critique of the prevailing rationalism and empiricism that dominated the Enlightenment era. By privileging the child’s intuitive and imaginative capacities, Romantic authors sought to challenge the notion that reason and logic were the sole arbiters of truth. In doing so, they emphasized the importance of the individual’s subjective experience and the transformative power of the imagination.
The child embodies an unspoiled and prelapsarian state that represents the harmonious relationship between humanity and the natural world, a connection that often succumbs to the artificial constructs of society. As Wordsworth famously proclaimed, “the child is the father of the man,” (‘My heart leaps up when I behold’ [1807], line 7) underscoring the notion that childhood not only serves as a blueprint for adulthood, but it is through the lens of the child that we can glimpse the essence of human existence. Adrienne E. Gavin argues that Romantic poetry inaugurated a novel construction of childhood as a “desirable” and “distinct” state from adulthood, an “idealized, clear- visioned, divinely pure, intuitive, and imaginative stage of life” that adults yearned for but had lost, and which they sought to recapture in literature. p. 7-8) Thus, the Romantic writers, through their depiction of children as “creatures of deeper wisdom, finer aesthetic sensitivity, and a more profound awareness of enduring moral truths” (history of childhood, Colin wood cite 28) elevated the status of children and instilled a new reverence for childhood in the collective consciousness. Through their intricate use of language and exploration of themes surrounding childhood innocence, these writers helped establish the child as a worthy subject for literary and artistic expression. As a result, they laid the foundation for future generations of authors to delve deeper into the complex and multi-dimensional world of the child’s experience, which ultimately flourished in the literary works of the Victorian era. (For explanation “the child serves a purpose for the adult who defines the child, and, in the case of the Romantic child, that purpose is restorative. While Wordsworth contemplates the child or remembers his own childhood, he is strong and healthy. In short, the child is an adult’s fantasy and like all fantasies it serves to organize desire.
To look on the child is to experience a longing for the place we once knew or think we once knew. This longing is nostalgia. William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience (1794) also famously expresses the Romantic sense of adulthood, or experience, as a falling away from childhood’s innocence. The removal of much of the British population from the countryside to towns and
cities during the Industrial Revolution created a strong current of nostalgia for a vanished past. This related strongly to Romanticism’s longing for childhood’s innocence and imagination. The child at once represented the freedom from responsibility adults craved and the idyll they had lost)
Throughout the Victorian period, extending from 1837 to 1901, England underwent considerable socio-cultural transformations, particularly in the context of the Industrial Revolution. This transformative era ushered in a new change in the conceptualization and treatment of children. No longer regarded merely as embodiments of innocence, they became commoditized as labor resources, “torn away from their families” and forced to “endure the long hours and harsh discipline of factories and were exposed to the dark immorality of the coal mines.” (Cunningham, 1991, p. 8) Economic necessity often drove families to send their children into the workforce, while others, orphaned or homeless, had no alternative but to labor. These cataclysmic events, though detrimental, ignited a literary revolution that not only amplified the voices of children and their experiences but also led to a deeper understanding of child psychology. In adult-focused Victorian literature, childhood representation evolved significantly, moving away from the idealism of the Romantic period to a portrayal characterized by “vulnerability, powerlessness, and subjugation to adult authority.” Such authority manifested itself in various forms, including “emotional” and “physical” abuse, societal apathy, “illness,” and premature “death.” (A. E. Gavin 9). As a result, the Victorian era witnessed the emergence of a child archetype susceptible to continuous degradation. Authors delved into childhood as a phase marked by a struggle between personal “desires” and inescapable “necessities,” replete with experiences of “deprivation” and “subjugation.” Eschewing the notion of an “angelic Child,” Victorian realists situated their child characters within a “specific place and time,” highlighting how environmental factors could profoundly impact—and, in instances, distort—their development. (A. Gavin child in british lit. 120) As Peter Coveney notes that the conflict between “innocence and experience,” initially sounded by Blake, emerged as the dominant theme in “early and mid-Victorian literature.” (poor monkey: the child in literature. p. 53) This literary movement nurtured more empathetic and compassionate societal attitudes toward children and their experiences while also promoting the diffusion of works that vested children with an agency, enabling them to articulate their own experiences and viewpoints. The utilization of child narrators functioned as one such means of empowerment. The Victorian era witnessed a novel preoccupation with the child’s perspective and voice, whereby, as Marah Gubar elucidates, the “testimonies of children were sought out and recorded; disseminated in government reports and journalistic accounts of city life,” thus inspiring reform on diverse fronts, and profoundly influencing the literary “representation of children.” (our field the rise of child narrator gubar p. 39)
In the sphere of English Literature, the literary corpus of Charles Dickens (1812-1870) stands out for its vivid portrayal of childhood and scrupulous examination of the diverse voices permeating society. In its true sense, Dickens was the first to unveil the potential of incorporating child characters as crucial elements in narratives designed for adult consumption, a concept heretofore unexplored by preceding novelists. As Peter Coveney writes, “the child was at the heart of his interests, at the centre of the Dickens world. There is perhaps no other major English novelist whose achievement was so closely regulated by a feeling of childhood.” (Image of childhood coveney p.71) The presence of child narrators in his fiction materialized as an innovative method to offer a novel standpoint on the social conditions of the epoch. He utilised the child perspective as a mechanism for scrutinising the duplicity, injustice, and somber realities of Victorian society through the unblemished lens of a child, bearing witness to these phenomena as firsthand experiences. Children thus began to engage with society critically, contradicting the prevailing notion that they would simply absorb, imitate, and adhere to adult perspectives.
Scholarly discourse regarding the use of child narrators in adult literature commonly attributes the inception of this technique to Mark Twain’s renowned work, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). According to the translation of Schneider Helena’s work by Linda Steinmetz, Twain’s Huckleberry Finn holds the distinction of being the first literary composition that consistently renders a child’s perspective throughout the entire narrative. (steinmetz p. 45) As pointed out earlier that prior to the advent of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the assimilation of child characters into the broader thematic tapestry of literature had already been accomplished by Charles Dickens in his works such as David Copperfield (1849) and Great Expectations (1860). However, Charles Dickens did not undertake any extensive literary exploration in his novels to present a continuous and comprehensive representation of the world as perceived by children. Rather, he opted for a technique that involved amalgamating an adult narrative voice with the recounted viewpoint of a child character. In David Copperfield, the eponymous protagonist’s bildungsroman unfolds as a retrospective narrative, imbuing the text with a duality that intersects juvenile naivete and critical adult scrutiny. The narrative oscillates between the liminal spaces of innocence and experience, manifesting Dickens’ depth of characterization and his ontological exploration of the multifaceted progression of human consciousness. The child narrator’s voice construes a dialectical tension between the internal and external worlds, accentuating the verisimilitude of diverse emotional responses vis-a-vis the protagonist’s evolving social landscape. As Elizabeth Goodenough points out (Infant Tongues, p. 123) David Copperfield is “his own narrator and makes a determined effort to re-enter faithfully his earlier self as child and to relieve his early life.” (123).The raw naivete and vulnerability of David in the early stages of the novel heighten the emotional impact of his experiences. For instance, David’s relationship with the sadistic Mr. Murdstone and the gruelling experiences at the industrial boarding school expose readers to the harsh realities of the Victorian era, implicating themes such as poverty, child labour, and cruelty in a deeply personal manner. David possesses a unique ability to access the perspective of his own inner child and convey the emotional experience of that younger version of himself while maintaining the analytical and cognitive capacities of his current adult self. This remarkable skill allows him to effectively bridge the gap between past and present, and to offer a nuanced and insightful perspective on the human experience. By tapping into his own memories and utilizing his adult intellect, David is able to create a rich and compelling portrait of childhood that effectively captures the complexity and depth of this formative period in his life. As Mark Spilka observes, “the childlike view connects unconscious tensions with the conscious scene. Because the child lacks self-awareness, and because he fails to understand his elders, his bafflement aligns two realms of feeling.” (‘David Copperfield as Psychological Fiction’ in Dickens:
Modern Judgements, ed. A.E. Dyson, Macmillan, 1968, p. l86.) (copied from dickens child characters d brrok )
Again in Great Expectations, Pip’s first-person narrative voice presents a bildungsroman imbued with a child’s wonder and confusion. Pip, the protagonist, serves as both the focalizer and the narrator of the story, employing the pronoun “I” to convey his thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. Nonetheless, the novel’s narrative structure incorporates two distinct versions of the protagonist’s self, which are demarcated by their temporal and experiential differences between them. The adult Pip, endowed with a more mature and informed perspective, serves as the overt narrator of the story. At the same time, the child Pip, who is characterized by his emotional and intuitive nature, represents the implied narrator, whose voice is subtly integrated into the narrative. The narrative skillfully maintains a delicate balance between Pip’s childish perspective, which encompasses feelings of “terror, fascination, and helplessness,” and the perspective of the mature narrator, who appears “confident, secure, and powerful in his recollection of the event.” (Jordan p. 78)
Thus both David Copperfield and Great Expectations employ retrospective narratives to construct vivid and multi-layered portrayals of their protagonists’ journeys of self-discovery. The duality between the protagonist’s past and present selves offers a rich exploration of the human psyche, highlighting the interplay between unconscious tensions and conscious experience. The main advantage of using the dual narratives of a child and an adult (experiencing self and the narrating self) not only enhances the reader’s understanding but also preserves the distinctiveness of Pip and David, which is essential to the development of the novels’ plots. Indeed, for a larger part, these characters are not afforded the opportunity to enter into the minds of others but are instead endowed with a remarkable ability to recall and articulate their own emotions and observations. (Brown p. 198) In this regard, Dickens’ literary technique in his works, as mentioned above, presents a stark contrast to Mark Twain’s approach in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Twain’s novel is remarkable in giving an unadulterated and uninterrupted portrayal of a child’s perspective throughout the text, providing an authentic representation of a child’s cognitive, emotional, and social development.
Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn unarguably stands as a tour de force in the realm of American Literature, exemplifying a skillfully crafted bildungsroman embedded within a broader social commentary. Set against the meandering backdrop of the Mississippi River, the tale unfolds an odyssey of self-discovery and moral evolution for the eponymous protagonist as he grapples with the prevailing ethical codes and societal norms of his epoch. The novel’s narrative voice unfurls through the first-person perspective of a child narrator (Huck), whose innocence and rustic charm offer a unique window into the complexities and contradictions inherent in the nineteenth-century American South. Situated within this somber context, we find an elaborate microcosm of child relations (Huck and Jim; Huck and Buck, etc.) intricately interlaced in such an emotionally and intellectually captivating manner that it seizes the reader’s focus, compelling them to rethink–in accordance with Barry Marks’ assertions–the inherent essence of “truth and the possibility of open and sincere human relationships.” (The making of Humorist : the narrative strategy p. 140) As articulated by Clarence A. Brown, one of the most striking features of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn is the remarkable “consistency” with which the author has crafted the “illusion” that the narrative is conveyed by the titular character, Huck himself. Right from the beginning of the work, Twain unambiguously positions Huck as the narrative’s focal point – the “center of consciousness” or the “reflector.” Twain’s explicit narration from Huck’s perspective presents a filtered view of events, emphasising Huck’s dual role as a reporter and a center of consciousness. As a reporter, Huck accurately records what he observes, but as a center of consciousness, he “refracts” his experiences through his own imagination and viewpoint, shaping the narrative’s tone and meaning. The novel contains two distinct worlds: one that exists outside of Huck’s limited scope of experience, which he reports accurately, and another that lies within the confines of his understanding, which he can interpret and present in greater depth. The book’s manifold effects are achieved through a “simple vocabulary aided now and again by Huck’s own coinages.” (C. A. Brown pp. 11-13) Dispensing with the idea that children ought to be sheltered within the confines of their families, the protagonist is thrust into the realm of adulthood—an apotheosis that signifies the merging of innocence and maturity. Huck could be said, in the words of Valerie Vogrin (2003), to offer the reader an “experience of the world through his eyes and ears and nose and skin.” (80) Basically, the novel’s tension and irony are generated by the interplay between the picaresque realm embarked upon by Huckleberry Finn and the convoluted adult world that engulfs him while he struggles to fathom its intricacies.


The study of child narrators and focalisers has become increasingly popular in recent years. This can be observed in the growing number of publications and scholarly works that have emerged, highlighting the growing desire to comprehend and explore the unique and nuanced perspectives of young individual. One of the key reasons for this growing interest in children’s perspectives is the recognition of the unique and valuable insights that children can offer. Today, children are no longer seen as just miniature adults or predominantly innocent or naive creatures but as “knowing, manipulative, destructive, and sexual beings.” (childhood in the contemporary novel DINTER) Instead of adhering to a linear narrative of childhood as a progression from “innocence to experience, from ignorance to knowledge, and from dependency to autonomy,” contemporary research emphasises how “childhood is shaped by the power dynamics of the generational order.” (Dinter and Schneider, 36) Modern works of literature break away from the traditional ideas of childhood as simply a stage of life. Instead, they delve into the factors, motivations, and struggles that shape its cultural creation. (Dinter, Introduction, 2020)