Children's Literature of the English Renaissance by Warren Wooden

Abstract

Wooden's book, a posthumously published collection of nine essays on various Renaissance and late Medieval literature, has only tangential application to the study of folklore, and only two of the essays apply directly to folklore. However, as an introduction to early children's literature, the sum of these essays poses provocative questions about previous assumptions on children's literature, especially what it is and when it began. Wooden takes as his premise a definition promulgated by Sheila Egoff: "In a true sense, a children's book is simply one in which a child finds pleasure." Working from such an enabling statement, Wooden argues that many texts of the English Renaissance were written to appeal to as broad an audience as possible, an audience that obviously included children. He rejects the hypothesis that there is a distinct children's literature separate from the adult canon and articulates a taxonomy with rather amorphous bounds. While exclusively adult literature, such as the masques and poetry of the neo-classical Tribe of Ben, as he calls Jonson and his school, and the avant-garde, intellectual exercises of Donne and the metaphysical exists, Wooden argues that Renaissance literature contains a wide range of works, on a number of levels, that would apply and hold a child's interest.