Edward Gorey's Neo-Victorian Picturebooks: Unravelling the Dark Humours of Childhood Culture

爱德华·戈里的新维多利亚时期图画书：揭开童年文化的黑色幽默

• 批准号: 2895097
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Roehampton
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2895097
• 关键词: Edward; Gorey; Neo; Victorian; Picturebooks

This project investigates dark humour in children's literature and childhood culture through its focus on the twentieth-century American writer, illustrator, and theatrical designer, Edward Gorey, and his Victorian-style picturebooks that depict violence and childhood death. Specifically, I will demonstrate how Gorey incorporates Victorian literary and theatrical humour into his transgressive picturebooks via conventions of the puppet show in order to identify them as children's literature. I also demonstrate that his ambiguous endings frame postwar American notions of the moral complexity of childhood, challenging sentimentalised view of childhood innocence in some Victorian literature. This project is conducted via mixed methodology of historical research-drawing on Punch and Judy collections and Edward Gorey's archives-combined with literary critical analysis. This is the first large-scale, transatlantic, interdisciplinary research of humour as a crucial component of children's literature, casting light on Gorey's controversial picturebooks, which are rarely categorised as children's books. Investigation into Gorey's dynamic text-image relationship and his comically sadistic treatment of children develops scholarship on humour in children's literature, which has been strangely under-researched despite its common associations with childhood culture. Moreover, interrogating the British-American dynamic reveals a simultaneous overlapping and divergence in manifestations of childhood humour. Furthermore, interpretative plurality of Gorey's picturebooks reveals a reconsideration of constructions of childhood, blurring the line between books for adults and children. The transatlantic focus of this study yields new insights into neo-Victorian studies that is largely limited to the British social and cultural sphere, allowing for international reach. This project also reveals close relationships between children's literature and theatrical culture, as well as the Gothic and literary humour. By identifying Gorey's picturebooks as children's literature, this study offers a critical reconsideration of the wider field and extends the scope of children's books.

该项目通过关注20世纪的美国作家，插画家和戏剧设计师爱德华·戈里（Edward Gorey）以及他的维多利亚时代风格的图画书，调查了儿童文学和童年文化中的黑暗幽默。具体来说，我将展示戈里如何通过木偶秀的惯例将维多利亚时代的文学和戏剧性幽默纳入他的侵犯图画书中，以便将它们识别为儿童文学。我还证明了他的模棱两可的结局构成了战后美国关于童年道德复杂性的观念，在一些维多利亚时代的文学中挑战了对童年无罪的情感化观点。该项目是通过有关拳和朱迪收藏的历史研究的混合方法以及爱德华·戈里（Edward Gorey）与文学批判性分析结合的档案。这是对幽默作为儿童文学的关键组成部分的第一个大规模的，跨大西洋的跨学科研究，对戈里有争议的图画书构成了启示，这些图画很少被归类为儿童读物。对戈里动态的文本图像关系和他对儿童的可笑虐待的调查，在儿童文学中发展了幽默的学术奖学金，尽管它与童年文化有着共同的联系，但奇怪的是研究了。此外，审问不列颠裔动态，揭示了童年幽默表现的同时重叠和分歧。此外，戈里（Gorey）的图画书的解释性复数表明，重新考虑了童年的建构，模糊了成人和儿童书籍之间的界限。这项研究的跨大西洋重点产生了对新维多利亚研究的新见解，这些研究在很大程度上仅限于英国的社会和文化领域，从而实现了国际影响力。该项目还揭示了儿童文学与戏剧文化以及哥特式和文学幽默之间的密切关系。通过将Gorey的图画书识别为儿童文学，这项研究对更广泛的领域进行了批判性的重新考虑，并扩展了儿童读物的范围。