Reconstructing Childhood via Reimagined Memories: Life Writing in Children’s Literature
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Cognitive Literary Studies, Life Writing, and the Archival Study of Creative Writing Processes
I think that our gradings of reality and fiction are rather like our bipedal locomotion—learnt naturally, our second nature—but when analysed by roboticists or literary critics found to be dismayingly complex and subtle. Nevertheless, we persist in remaining upright and walking about.
3. Reconstructive Memory
4. The Paper Traces of Mental Time Travel: Roald Dahl, David Almond, and Jacqueline Woodson
4.1. Roald Dahl’s Boy: “Skim Them off the Top of My Consciousness and Write Them Down”
This is not an autobiography. I would never write a history of myself. On the other hand, throughout my young days at school and just afterwards a number of things happened to me that I have never forgotten (…) I didn’t have to search for any of them. All I had to do was skim them off the top of my consciousness and write them down. Some are funny. Some are painful. Some are unpleasant. I suppose that it why I have always remembered them so vividly. All are true.([1984] 2016, n. pag.)
4.2. David Almond’s Counting Stars: A “Memory Quilt”
I was living on the dole in Suffolk when I wrote the first of the stories in Counting Stars. It was a bitterly cold winter. I wore a hat and scarf as I wrote at a table in a little room overlooking frosty farmland. The story seemed to come from nowhere. I remember writing the first words: “For a long time after Helen died, Mam used to pull my shoulders forward, kiss me, and slip her fingers beneath my shoulder blades and tell me, This is where your wings were…” My mother did do this when I was a boy. I could feel her fingers as I wrote. I could hear her voice. I knew the story was about my sister, Barbara, who died when I was a boy. But in that early version, I didn’t dare to write her proper name.(2000, p. 199)
4.3. Jacqueline Woodson: Memory as a “Mixed Bag”
5. Conclusions: Reconstructing Childhood via Reimagined Memories
Funding
Data Availability Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
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Silva, E.-L. Reconstructing Childhood via Reimagined Memories: Life Writing in Children’s Literature. Literature 2024, 4, 214-233. https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4040016
Silva E-L. Reconstructing Childhood via Reimagined Memories: Life Writing in Children’s Literature. Literature. 2024; 4(4):214-233. https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4040016
Chicago/Turabian StyleSilva, Emma-Louise. 2024. "Reconstructing Childhood via Reimagined Memories: Life Writing in Children’s Literature" Literature 4, no. 4: 214-233. https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4040016
APA StyleSilva, E.-L. (2024). Reconstructing Childhood via Reimagined Memories: Life Writing in Children’s Literature. Literature, 4(4), 214-233. https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4040016