Ewww, fantasy is bad! Won't you think of the Children?

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Mary Shelley may well be more famous than her husband in popular culture, but Percy Bysshe Shelley is one of the greats of the English Romantic movement, and will surely be remembered in the field of English literature as long as his contemporaries like Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Byron.

Right.
But Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley transcends english literature.
She is a global literary figure and Frankenstein is a transcendent work that focuses on primal elements of human nature as much as the Greek classics. That puts her on a higher plane than english literary figures. Or French, Spanish, or American, for that matter.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Right.
But Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley transcends english literature.
She is a global literary figure and Frankenstein is a transcendent work that focuses on primal elements of human nature as much as the Greek classics. That puts her on a higher plane than english literary figures. Or French, Spanish, or American, for that matter.

I agree. All I was disagreeing with was the statement that Shelley would be relegated to "a footnote in his wife's biography". He is, and I think will remain, a significant literary figure in his own right.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

It takes a vivid imagination to be scared by Dracula.
Or any horror book.

To be honest, I found SHAMBLEAU more impressive.
The modern narrative style fitted the theme better than Stoker's epistolary structure.
(I read them both around the same time. Both good but SHAMBLEAU was creepier.)

The problem with Dracula was the letter writing/journal writing style. That just didn't lend itself to be scary.

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by HarryT

(and the little-performed "Titus Andronicus" even more so!)

I was actually shocked when I heard that play. Partly by its extreme violence, and partly by the fact that it wasn't modern. However, when you go back to the various European wars, it's clear that pretty much every conceivable atrocity was acted out at some point in the past. It's a conceit that we think that we're more sophisticated in violence than those "rubes" in the past.

[Dopedangel]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Depends on the fantasy.
One kind is good for children, the other kind is bad for children.

The worst kind of fantasy and most read by children are the religious texts of most religions. They make the children grow up to be racists, xenophobes and bigots the more people leave behind religion the better the world will be.
Fantasy to me is a great way of opening eyes to the fact that the religious texts and stories are as fantastical as the fantasy stories we read.
We have comic books and characters today that are revered and have huge followings but in the old days these fantastical figures were in religious texts had powers the people of those periods could understand such as talking to animals, flying or curing illnesses. Now days we have Iron man and Captain America etc.

[DiapDealer]

Moderator Notice
The criticism of (or support for) organized religion is a topic that belongs in the P&R forum. That's what it's for. Please move the conversation there if you wish to pursue the topic.

[darryl]

Have a think about your own family, friends and acquaintances. How many truly love to read? Very few in my own circle. My mother enjoyed reading very much. My father too enjoyed a good book but rarely got the free time. None of my siblings read. I have only two friends who are big readers. Two of my friends who are amongst the brightest and best educated people I know never read for pleasure.

Assuming my experience is fairly typical, we must face the fact that those who read for enjoyment are very much in a minority. OF those who don't read for enjoyment, there is, I think, a large group who who will never be readers. And also a large group who don't read because of their unpleasant experiences at school. I agree with Harry that a good teacher could make a lot of difference, But once again based on my own experience in my dim distant schooldays I don't think there are very many teachers who can inspire a love of reading.with the curricula which is served up. Shakespeare and Chaucer require effort to understand, not only because of the now archaic language but also the background and context. I'm not saying that Shakespeare should not be part of school curricula at all. Just that for far too many children he is as torturous as gym class to the poorly co-ordinated child. And making that Child read and dissect the classics is almost guaranteed to kill any possibility of that Child reading for enjoyment in the future.

I think curricula first and foremost should aim to foster a love of reading. I am not a teacher and would not want to be, but too many times I have seen a possible love of reading killed by soulless English curricula. Who knows, if we foster the love of reading we may well see many who come to and enjoy the classics later in life.

[WT Sharpe]

The anonymous author of that piece states his conclusions as if they were facts but offers no support for them. He could just have easily argued that sippy cups should be banned because they lead to psychopathy in later life.

[Tarana]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Thank goodness none of his examples of appropriate, "traditional" authors ever wrote any works that contained any of that nonsense.

Frankenstein
A Christmas Carol
A Midsummer Night's Dream
The Tempest
Ode to a Nightingale

Let's not forget MacBeth!! Kindof the most famous. My opinion is to simply let children read what interests them and discuss it. I agree that some things probably shouldn't be read by children. I recall reading Helter Skelter at 16...wish I had waited. In my Dad's time, comic books were melting the minds of children and my grandfather insisted my Dad could not have any comic books. Turns out he had the largest collection in the neighborhood.

[Red Falcon]

My way in to a life long passion for the written word was through stuff like the Brothers Grimm, all the classic Victorian supernatural fiction by all the writers he totes no less, George MacDonald, Alfred Dunsany, JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis. I was blessed with a few adults as a child who saw my passion for the weird and fantastic and feed it. If it was not for these writers I would never have grown up to be an english professor.

[Nothingness]

My mother never had issues with what I read. In my teens I read Bilbo and Lord of the Rings, Dracula, and Stephen King's and Dean R. Koontz's numerous novels. There was a dark fantasy serie for teenagers that I liked as well. back then called Twilight: Where Darkness Begins, I really wish I could find all the books.

[WT Sharpe]

Really, what the children see and hear should depend upon the children themselves. When the Nightmare on Elm Street movies were all the rage, I didn't want my then 13 year old fantasy-prone son watching Freddie Krueger movies, but had no problem with my then 8 year old daughter watching them. To her they were just movies. To him, Krueger was someone to obsess over.

[JSWolf]

Kids get exposed to things all the time that some might think are not good for them like news programs on TV where they get exposed to all kinds of violence. If they go to temple/church/etc. they can be exposed to the violence in religious books. There's violence when they are learning history in school. There is violence allover the place that kids get exposed to that's either real or said to be real.

[ekbell]

The ironic thing is that the man making these statements will be teaching his elementary students various tales from mythology if he is truly following Stiener.

While not a follower of Stiener, I too read various folk tales and myths to my children (currently D'Aulaires' Book of Norse Myths) and even the adapted for kids versions contain plenty of material which is sensational and could be discribed as 'dark' (we will be reading about the death of Balder and Loki's punishment next).

I don't think I've come across any idea that the Game of Thrones is suitable for children but I really think that if I'm willing to read stories about people being killed, magic being used, god's shapeshifting into various animals and siring/bearing children (the latest being Loki 'mothering' Slepnir) to my children that it would be silly to worry about them reading Harry Potter.

[JSWolf]

If I had kids in the school this idiot runs, I'd be complaining big time.