Of Beasts and Boys: Kingsley, Spencer, and the Theory of Recapitulation
Of Beasts and Boys: Kingsley, Spencer, and the Theory of Recapitulation
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野兽与男孩：金斯利、斯宾塞和生命回顾理论
DOI：
10.2979/vic.2007.49.4.583
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发表时间：
2007
影响因子：
1.1
通讯作者：
Jessica Straley
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Jessica Straley
金斯利的《水娃》是金斯利对形态逆转和进步的幻想，与赫伯特·斯宾塞通过原始科学探究的重述概念相对照，本文探讨了这位儿童文学“黄金时代”的先驱者如何试图将文学文本作为儿童道德培养的寓言和载体。孩子不再是浪漫主义的天真理想，而是被许多后达尔文主义的思想家视为人类之前的兽性历史的活生生的遗迹。斯宾塞提出的科学教学法，旨在帮助孩子超越他的原始人类状态，主张只受自然的指导。《水宝宝》采用了这种教学方法，将年轻的主人公变成一只蝾螈，他必须通过第一手的观察和自我指导的实验来学习如何变回一个孩子。然而，金斯利对斯宾塞概括性教学法的改编自相矛盾地承认，并最终在孩子从野兽到男孩的微缩过程中提升了文学和道德教育。
Reading The Water-Babies, Kingsley's fantasy of morphological reversion and progress, against Herbert Spencer's conception of recapitulation through primitive scientific inquiry, this paper considers how this harbinger of the "Golden Age" of children's literature sought to establish the literary text as an allegory of and vehicle for the moral cultivation of the child. No longer Romanticism's innocent ideal, the child was regarded by many post-Darwinian thinkers as a living vestige of the species' bestial, pre-human past. The scientific pedagogy proposed by Spencer, designed to help the child transcend his proto-human state, argued for instruction by nature alone. The Water-Babies adopts this pedagogical program, metamorphosing its young protagonist into a newt who must learn from first-hand observation and self-directed experimentation how to evolve back into a child. However, Kingsley's adaptation of Spencer's recapitulative pedagogy paradoxically admits and ultimately exalts literary and moral instruction within the child's miniaturized ascent from beast to boy.