Title: Speaking to Both Children and Genre: Le Guin's Ethics of Audience
Abstract: Writers who claim that they write only for themselves deny that the influence of either genre or a readership guides the writing. These writers argue by implication that they neither communicate with readers nor observe generic traditions; they simply write to themselves. They are self-proclaimed literary isolationists. Jill Paton Walsh ("The Writers in the Writer" 4), Katherine Paterson (47, 50), P. L. Travers (63), Mollie Hunter (12), and Michael Steig (Bottner 4) all directly point to themselves as at least partial audience in their commentaries on writing for children, but they don't go so far as to claim that they don't write for children. Arthur Ransome made "the reiterated denial that he wrote for children" (Wall 30), but he ultimately "made a distinction between writing for children and writing to children" (30), claiming the latter occupation for himself. Peter Hollindale believes that Ransome is less interested in child readers than he is childhood ("Signs" 31), which Hollindale considers a feature of the genre of children's literature. In any case, writers for children who would deny both interest in and consciousness of form and audience argue that theirs is children's literature entirely by accident. However, a book becomes a children's book--intended by the writer or not--when critics identify generic features (text) and/or children find that the book speaks to them (context).
Publication Year: 2000
Publication Date: 2000-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 5
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