Literature and the child

"The Romantic myth of childhood as a trans-historical holy time of innocence and spirituality, uncorrupted by the adult world, has been subjected in recent years to increasingly serious interrogation. Was there ever really a time when mythic ideals were simple, pure, and uncomplicated?

The contributors to this book contend - although in widely differing ways and not always approvingly - that our culture is indeed still pervaded, in this postmodern moment of the very late twentieth century, by the Romantic conception of childhood which first emerged two hundred years ago."--BOOK JACKET.