Carroll / Burnett

Within the English canon of literary fairy-tales -- what German literary critics would refer to as a "marchen," or a conscious attempt to write imaginative literature, with some level of artistry, for children -- both The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll seem to have withstood the test of time, and attained a level of canonicity. Yet to call these books mere fairy tales -- no matter how literary -- is to underestimate the influence that adult literary genres have upon the composition of children's classics. The simple fact is that, although the Alice and The Secret Garden are obviously children's books with child protagonists, each one manages to take a genre more obviously intended for adult readers and try to make it viable for young readers. In the case of The Secret Garden, the books affinities to Gothic...
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