The construction of history and childhood in literature and film for children in Ireland, 1990-2003

Abstract

This thesis examines the construction of and relationship between childhood and history in Irish children’s texts. The project takes a multi-disciplinary approach, focussing on the construction of history and of childhood in two main areas of Irish culture: children’s literary fictions and children’s film representing twentieth-century Irish history that were produced between 1990 and 2003. This analysis examines specific narratives as sites of interaction between the ideological constructions of Irish childhood and Irish history and their relation to cultural discourses of late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century Ireland. My methodology is based upon the integration and adaptation of existing critical approaches to literature and film including theories related to children’s texts and concepts of childhood. In particular 1 draw upon the following: the work of Peter Hollindale and his concept of ‘childness’: the problematisation of history, with specific reference to the theories of Michel Foucault; and the construction of history and historiographies in Irish culture. This approach expands and develops ideas of childness and creates a new inter-disciplinary methodology which allows for the simultaneous exploration of childhood and history. Each chapter examines particular texts in terms of the author or filmmaker’s use of concepts of childhood and childness to represent ideas of Irish history from a contemporary perspective.