What's in a Child's Voice?

Stéphanie Benson (1) , Nathalie Jaëck (1) , Stéphanie Durrans (1)

1 CLIMAS - Cultures et Littératures des Mondes Anglophones

In Hard Times, Charles Dickens expounds at some length on the war against Fancy waged by educators. In the spirit of the Industrial Revolution, children were to be brought up to realism and led away from the childish realms of fancy. Sissy Jupe is an unfortunate victim of this war against " the Fairies, sir, and the Dwarf, and the Hunchback, and the Genies " (35) glimpsed in the books she once read to her father—and to her dog. They shaped her imagination and so her voice, an enchanted yet a disruptive voice. For Dickens, it was also the voice of nature, a useful weapon in the struggle against the champions of Reason and Productivity. Sissy Jupe is as good a starting point as any to ask just what is in a child's voice in literature. How is it different from an adult voice? What is it that makes it sound childish? What makes it so particular, and to what end does the writer use it? Do first-person and third-person narrators spark the same emotions in the reader when both are children? Are the possibilities for using a child's voice in narrative limited? Or is there a danger of forfeiting verisimilitude (when the vocabulary or syntax is too sophisticated for a child) or depth of emotion (when the vocabulary and syntax are too simple)?

Domaines: Littératures

Stéphanie Benson, Nathalie Jaëck, Stéphanie Durrans. What's in a Child's Voice?. Leaves, 2016, Voix d’enfants, regards d’enfants /The Child’s Voice, the Child’s Gaze, 2. ⟨hal-01599778⟩