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“Why Reasonable Children Don’t Think that Nutcracker is Alive or that the Mouse King is Real"
- Author(s):
- Lisa Zunshine (see profile)
- Date:
- 2022
- Group(s):
- GS Children’s and Young Adult Literature, GS Prose Fiction, Interdisciplinary Approaches to Culture and Society, TC Cognitive and Affect Studies, TM Literary and Cultural Theory
- Subject(s):
- Hoffmann, E. T. A. (Ernst Theodor Amadeus), 1776-1822, Imagination, Cognition, Social perception, Literature, Romanticism, Reason, Metacognition, Children, Cognitive science
- Item Type:
- Article
- Tag(s):
- fairy tales, education, developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, literary theory, literary history
- Permanent URL:
- https://doi.org/10.17613/pfa3-ga97
- Abstract:
- Zunshine’s essay draws on recent research in developmental psychology and cognitive evolutionary anthropology to examine emotional responses to supernatural events by the child and adult characters of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s The Nutcracker and the Mouse King (1816), as well as to revisit the traditional literary critical view of those responses, according to which the tale’s main protagonist, the seven-year-old Marie, possesses a “Romantic imagination” (in contrast to her philistine parents). Zunshine demonstrates, first, that Marie’s stubborn insistence on the reality of Nutcracker and the Mouse King is well in keeping with what developmental psychologists today would expect from children of her age group; and, second, that when Marie’s parents are called to comment on their daughter’s account of her magical adventures, their stodgy response is influenced by a very particular kind of social pressure under which they find themselves. While the essay’s primary goal is to emphasize the developmental and social aspects of the characters’ attitudes toward what is real, Zunshine also discusses the legitimacy of using recent research by cognitive scientists for examining the psychology and interpersonal dynamics of early nineteenth-century fictional characters.
- Metadata:
- xml
- Published as:
- Book chapter
- Status:
- Published
- Last Updated:
- 4 months ago
- License:
- Attribution-NonCommercial
- Share this:
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