(Dis)Entangling the Narrator’s and the Adult Reader’s Voices: Rosie’s Walk and Shhh! vs. The Nursery Alice
This paper addresses the question of the narrator’s and the adult reader’s voices in Rosie’s Walk (Hutchins 1968), Shhh! (Grindley & Utton 1991) and The Nursery Alice (Carroll 1890)—that is to say in books written for children under five, who (usually) cannot read on their own yet, and consequen...
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| Veröffentlicht in: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/esa, |
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| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Sprache: | Anglais |
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Etudes de stylistique anglaise
2019
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| Online Zugang: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Zusammenfassung: | This paper addresses the question of the narrator’s and the adult reader’s voices in Rosie’s Walk (Hutchins 1968), Shhh! (Grindley & Utton 1991) and The Nursery Alice (Carroll 1890)—that is to say in books written for children under five, who (usually) cannot read on their own yet, and consequently, (usually) need an adult reader to read the book to them. While Cochran-Smith (1985) has argued that the adult reader’s role is not limited to being the “spokesperson for the text,” since children’s books invite him/her to become a “secondary narrator or commentator on the text” (84), some children’s books try to limit and even block the adult reader’s participation, under the guise of encouraging dialogic interaction. Although there is some overlapping of the narrator’s and the adult reader’s voices in Rosie’s Walk and Shhh!, both books encourage the adult reader to depart from the text and truly become a “secondary narrator,” thereby making the two voices diverge considerably. The Nursery Alice, nonetheless, resorts to several strategies meant to thwart every single adult reader’s attempt to comment on the text, leading him/her to follow the flow of the narrator’s voice. |
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