Edward Gorey's Neo-Victorian Picturebooks: Unravelling the Dark Humours of Childhood Culture

该项目通过关注二十世纪美国作家、插画家和戏剧设计师爱德华·戈里及其描绘暴力和童年死亡的西班牙风格图画书，调查儿童文学和童年文化中的黑色幽默。具体来说，我将展示如何戈里纳入他的逾越picturebooks通过公约的木偶戏，以确定他们作为儿童文学的维多利亚文学和戏剧幽默。我还表明，他的模棱两可的结局框架战后美国的概念的道德复杂性的童年，挑战感伤的童年天真的看法在一些维多利亚文学。这个项目是通过历史研究的混合方法进行的-借鉴潘趣和朱迪收藏和爱德华戈里的档案-结合文学批评分析。这是第一个大规模的跨大西洋跨学科研究幽默作为儿童文学的一个重要组成部分，投射在戈里的有争议的图画书，这是很少被归类为儿童书籍。对戈雷的动态文本-图像关系和他对儿童的滑稽虐待的调查发展了儿童文学中幽默的学术研究，尽管它与儿童文化有着共同的联系，但奇怪的是，这一研究一直没有得到充分的研究。此外，询问英美动态揭示了同时重叠和分歧的表现形式的儿童幽默。此外，格雷图画书的解释多元化揭示了对童年建构的重新思考，模糊了成人书籍和儿童书籍之间的界限。这项研究的跨大西洋重点产生新的见解新维多利亚时代的研究，主要限于英国的社会和文化领域，允许国际影响。该项目还揭示了儿童文学与戏剧文化之间的密切关系，以及哥特式和文学幽默。本研究借由将葛瑞的图画书界定为儿童文学，提供了一个更广阔领域的批判性反思，并延伸了儿童图书的范围。

This project investigates dark humour in children's literature and childhood culture through its focus on the twentieth-century American writer, illustrator, and theatrical designer, Edward Gorey, and his Victorian-style picturebooks that depict violence and childhood death. Specifically, I will demonstrate how Gorey incorporates Victorian literary and theatrical humour into his transgressive picturebooks via conventions of the puppet show in order to identify them as children's literature. I also demonstrate that his ambiguous endings frame postwar American notions of the moral complexity of childhood, challenging sentimentalised view of childhood innocence in some Victorian literature. This project is conducted via mixed methodology of historical research-drawing on Punch and Judy collections and Edward Gorey's archives-combined with literary critical analysis. This is the first large-scale, transatlantic, interdisciplinary research of humour as a crucial component of children's literature, casting light on Gorey's controversial picturebooks, which are rarely categorised as children's books. Investigation into Gorey's dynamic text-image relationship and his comically sadistic treatment of children develops scholarship on humour in children's literature, which has been strangely under-researched despite its common associations with childhood culture. Moreover, interrogating the British-American dynamic reveals a simultaneous overlapping and divergence in manifestations of childhood humour. Furthermore, interpretative plurality of Gorey's picturebooks reveals a reconsideration of constructions of childhood, blurring the line between books for adults and children. The transatlantic focus of this study yields new insights into neo-Victorian studies that is largely limited to the British social and cultural sphere, allowing for international reach. This project also reveals close relationships between children's literature and theatrical culture, as well as the Gothic and literary humour. By identifying Gorey's picturebooks as children's literature, this study offers a critical reconsideration of the wider field and extends the scope of children's books.