The Natural History of Make-Believe: A Guide to the Principal Works of Britain, Europe, and America [Hardcover]

John Goldthwaite (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 22, 1996

The Man in the Moon has dropped down to earth for a visit. Over the hedge, a rabbit in trousers is having a pipe with his evening paper. Elsewhere, Alice is passing through a looking glass, Dorothy riding a tornado to Oz, and Jack climbing a beanstalk to heaven. To enter the world of children's literature is to journey to a realm where the miraculous and the mundane exist side by side, a world that is at once recognizable and real--and enchanted.

Many books have probed the myths and meanings of children's stories, but Goldthwaite's Natural History is the first exclusively to survey the magic that lies at the heart of the literature. From the dish that ran away with the spoon to the antics of Brer Rabbit and Dr. Seuss's Cat in the Hat, Goldthwaite celebrates the craft, the invention, and the inspired silliness that fix these tales in our minds from childhood and leave us in a state of wondering to know how these things can be. Covering the three centuries from the fairy tales of Charles Perrault to Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, he gathers together all the major imaginative works of America, Britain, and Europe to show how the nursery rhyme, the fairy tale, and the beast fable have evolved into modern nonsense verse and fantasy. Throughout, he sheds important new light on such stock characters as the fool and the fairy godmother and on the sources of authors as diverse as Carlo Collodi, Lewis Carroll, and Beatrix Potter. His bold claims will inspire some readers and outrage others. He hails Pinocchio, for example, as the greatest of all children's books, but he views C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia as a parable that is not only murderously misogynistic, but deeply blasphemous as well.

Fresh, incisive, and utterly original, this rich literary history will be required reading for anyone who cares about children's books and their enduring influence on how we come to see the world.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Covering three centuries of children's literature, from the fairy tales of Charles Perrault to Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, Goldthwaite, a sometime essayist for Harper's and the New York Times, delves into the world of imagination and delivers an opinionated, sometimes dense, but nevertheless thought-provoking work. While shedding new light on the sources of Carlo Collodi, Lewis Carroll, and Beatrix Potter, he suggests how the nursery rhyme, beast fable, and fairy tale have evolved into modern fantasy. Students of children's literature and anyone interested in the world of make-believe will find this stimulating. But when Goldthwaite argues that Pinocchio "stands alone in the literature of its time," some may take up the gauntlet and disagree; however, the author would probably welcome the battle. Barbara Elleman

Review

"Not for years has there been such an exhilarating, cranky, passionate, and ambitiously erudite new work of scholarship about children's literature.... John Goldthwaite has paid children's stories the honor of taking them seriously as literature and subjecting them to the tough, informed, and historical scrutiny they deserve. His theories may provoke fierce debate, but they are grounded in deeply humane, intelligently argued and honorable conviction."--The Washington Post Book World

"Thought-provoking work. While shedding new light on the sources of Carlo Collodi, Lewis Carroll, and Beatrix Potter, [Goldthwaite] suggests how the nursery rhyme, beast fable, and fairy tale have evolved into modern fantasy. Students of children's literature and anyone interested in the world of make-believe will find this stimulating."--Booklist

"In his work John Goldthwaite combines a writer's intention (how to make this story whole) and a scholar's curiosity (how and where do these bits fit) with a reader's love of what reading is good for. The Natural History is passionate, authoritative, unsettling, witty, and, in the words of a Signal reporter, 'hugely mature.'"--Nancy Chambers, Editor, Signal

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (February 22, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195038061
• ISBN-13: 978-0195038064
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #496,919 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #67 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy > History & Criticism

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Windy, but Engaging, April 2, 2008

By 

Noel (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Natural History of Make-Believe: A Guide to the Principal Works of Britain, Europe, and America (Hardcover)

"The Natural History of Make-Believe," by John Goldthwaite is just the kind of juicy-dry study I love. Juicy, because he probes the inner workings of fairy tales heirs, and dry, because ... he probes the inner workings of fairy tales heirs. Goldthwaite tends to prattle on when the reader would rather get on (100 pages on the subliminal "Alice in Wonderland," for example), but in spite of that I gleaned several new opinions and gobs of interesting quotes.

In the same breath, I chucked Goldthwaite's stuffy analysis of C.S. Lewis. Honestly, hasn't all that "self-absorbed misogynist" stuff been hashed out a hundred times? It's beyond me how millions of children can adore his "Chronicles" when, apparently, Lewis was just using Narnia as a vehicle for his poisoned pen.

But on to a (rather extended) sampling of my juicy notes and quotes:

Magic realism ... when the miraculous becomes real by association with the mundane and the mundane is transformed by its association with the miraculous.

With the advent of the fairy godmother, we have crossed the threshold of the church ... a composite of Christian and pagan elements.

Where the light of agape is occluded, Poetic Genius will be found floundering in the dark, spitting out scorn and non-sense.

To awaken rather than impress the meaning ... what the reader sees is not a rite but a wonder.

Because it presents the child with a portrait of a world he is, in real life, only just coming to know, every book teaches a new way of thinking about that world. The question is not whether a book teaches but what and how and whether its intent is to humanize a child or merely to socialize him.

Didactic purpose in children's stories (see the Lobster Quadrille, porpoise=purpose): inevitable inclusion vs. intrusion. Very fine line.

Such a belief, that the world is Sustained in its travels, is the one just warrant for inflicting pain in a children's book--for only by its felt presence can the pain be borne.

The business of fantasy authors is the business of miracles; their problem, in an age of rapid secularization, is how to redefine miracles so as to preserve them for the sake of the story. For what do you tell children when your instincts are for whimsy but you are either without a faith or no longer certain of the underlying warrant for dealing in miracles in the first place?

Feodor Rojankovsky: telling the truth like a tale, telling a tale like the truth.

Allsense, a gift of understanding, a confirmation to the meek and the powerless that they are alive in a world that is indeed invested with the imminence of wonder, which we call mystery, and the imminence of joy, which we call gladness. If these two imminences do not intimate the One imminence of a creative and self-revealing God, furthermore, they must by definition be specious and the miracle stories conveying them vain and sentimental entertainments.

Author as godparent ... if an author can discharge his role with a sympathetic wink and a push of the swings (like Perrault), so much the better. Never, however, should he deceive himself that because his tale is only a make-believe for children there is nothing more involved than a jolly hour or two at the playground.

Every work of make-believe announces to a credulous audience that the world is possessed of a quality that is beyond empirical knowing.

The only lasting justification for make-believe literature is the redemptive grace of agape, through which the world, with all its perils and squalor, may be revealed to children as a comic arena socially and a terra incognita invested with true mystery and true light.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Useful but flawed, June 2, 2006

By 

A Reader - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Natural History of Make-Believe: A Guide to the Principal Works of Britain, Europe, and America (Hardcover)

This book focuses on the history of English children's fantasy literature over the past several centuries.

The book presents much material on the topic, from the tales of Perrault and Grimm to Maurice Sendak's works. Deeper biographical information on the authors and how the stories came to be written is also presented, as well as historical information on the interrelationships between these works of literature.

On the negative side, the book's coverage of authors and works is rather spotty. Any book on fantasy literature that fails to treat the tales about King Arthur, the Arabian Nights stories and the works of William Morris is sorely lacking. Other books serve the task better, such as Children and Books by Arbuthnot and The Encyclopedia of Fantasy by Clute and Grant. Also, much historic context is lacking, such as the sources of some European fairy tale elements in earlier mythological writings.

The book is also filled with the author's idiosyncratic opinions and rants about books and authors he dislikes. He spends about thirty pages giving his negative subjective opinions about Tolkien and Lewis. The author is very opinionated. One recalls the old saw, "A fool delights in revealing his own mind."

This having been said, the book has much useful information on the development of English fantasy literature that is potentially helpful to those interested in the subject.

10 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars the ideal story represents the biblical view of wisdom, April 30, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Natural History of Make-Believe: A Guide to the Principal Works of Britain, Europe, and America (Hardcover)

The ideal tale teaches moral wisdom as represented in the Book of Proverbs; the fairy godmother represents Dame Wisdom. Goldthwaite presents a rare Christian literary point of view and criticizes writers who represent the world in some gnostic or pagan point of view. He does not bother to argue the validity of his point of view. He believes. Earth and the Heavans are God's. Writers who do not reflect this are either heretics or pagans From his position akin to Dante's, you may sense how much of modern literature inhabits either limbo or hell.