The Literature Network - Hovering between irony and innocence: George MacDonald's "The Light Princess" and the gravity of childhood.

Hovering between irony and innocence: George MacDonald's "The Light Princess" and the gravity of childhood.

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From: Mosaic (Winnipeg)
Date: 20040301
Author:Billone, Amy

During the Victorian period, George MacDonald deconstructed the innocence/experience dichotomy by revealing a link between innocence and irony. Reading MacDonald's first children's story "The Light Princess" alongside Baudelaire's "De I'Essence du Rire," this essay demonstrates how MacDonald gave children's literature itself new weight.

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Part of what troubles us about the term light is its shifting connotations. The word can mean easy, effortless, sunny, weightless, quick, silly, giddy, irresponsible, or mobile in time and in space. In George MacDonald's first ...

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