Typography and Narrative Voice in Children's Literature
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Typography and Narrative Voice in Children’s Literature: Relationships, Interactions, and Symbiosis A Thesis submitted to the School of English at the University of Dublin, Trinity College, for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. January 2018 Louise Gallagher I declare that this thesis has not been submitted as an exercise for a degree at this or any other university and it is entirely my own work. I agree to deposit this thesis in the University’s open access institutional repository or allow the Library to do so on my behalf, subject to Irish Copyright Legislation and Trinity College Library conditions of use and acknowledgement. _________________________________ Louise Gallagher January 2018 ii TABLE OF CONTENTS SUMMARY ................................................................................................................... V ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................................... VII INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 1 Typography and Paratext ....................................................................................................................... 5 Narrative Voice ....................................................................................................................................... 8 Children’s Literature and the Child Reader ......................................................................................... 10 Multimodal Literature ........................................................................................................................... 12 RATIONAL AND STRUCTURE ....................................................................................................................... 14 A STORY TO BEGIN WITH ............................................................................................................................. 19 CHAPTER 1: TYPOGRAPHY AND BOOK DESIGN IN CHILDREN’S LITERATURE – LITERACY, LEGIBILITY AND THE VOICE IN THE TEXT ................................................................................................................. 23 READING, TYPOGRAPHY AND THE CHILD READER ............................................................................. 23 Case Study 1: The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes; Otherwise known as, Mrs. Margery Two-Shoes by Anon .............................................................................................................................................. …27 Case Study 2: Lessons for Children (1778-79) by Anna Letitia Barbauld ............................................ 35 FROM LITERATURE AND LITERACY, TO LEGIBILITY AND THE VOICE IN THE TEXT ..................... 48 LEGIBILITY IN CHILDREN’S BOOKS .......................................................................................................... 53 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................................. 60 CHAPTER 2: HANDWRITING, PRINT, AND CHILDREN’S PICTUREBOOKS. ...................................................................................................... 61 ADULTS WRITING FOR CHILDREN ............................................................................................................ 61 Case Study 1: A Very Pretty Story (1744) by Jane Johnson ................................................................. 63 Case Study 2: The Father Christmas Letters by J.R.R. Tolkien ............................................................ 70 LETTER, TEXT, IMAGE – PICTUREBOOKS ................................................................................................ 82 THE WORD/IMAGE INTERACTION AND POSTMODERN PICTUREBOOKS ......................................... 85 Beyond the Division of Word and Image: Handwritten Words and Printed Typeface in the Postmodern Picturebooks of Sara Fanelli and Oliver Jeffers ................................................................................... 87 Case Study 3: Sara Fanelli ................................................................................................................... 88 Case Study 4: Oliver Jeffers ............................................................................................................... 103 Case Study 5: The Stinky Cheese Man (1992) by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith ................................ 115 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................................ 123 iii CHAPTER 3: PARATEXTS, POETRY AND PARALLEL WORLDS .................... 124 PARATEXT, MULTIMODALITY AND THE GRAPHIC SURFACE ............................................................. 124 Case Study 1: Dynamic Type – Character, Action and Sound............................................................ 129 Case Study 2: Layout – Pattern Poetry and Shaped Prose ................................................................. 141 Case Study 3: Colour and Typography ............................................................................................... 159 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................................... 171 CHAPTER 4: TYPOGRAPHY AND NARRATIVE VOICE – SYMBIOSIS .......... 172 TYPOGRAPHY AND FIRST-PERSON NARRATIVES – FINDING THE CHILD ON THE PAGE ........... 172 Case Study 1: An Early School Story With No Lessons in It............................................................... 173 Case Study 2: Trauma, Memory and Power ....................................................................................... 180 Case Study 3: Typography and Narrative Voice in Symbiosis............................................................ 186 Case Study 4: Power, Censorship and Young Adult Voices ............................................................... 221 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................................... 233 CONCLUSION .......................................................................................................... 235 A STORY RETOLD ....................................................................................................................................... 235 FURTHER APPLICATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH ............................................................................ 242 WORKS CITED ......................................................................................................... 245 iv Summary This thesis examines the relationship between narrative voice and the typography used to present it to readers in children’s literature. A selection of children’s books in English from Irish, European and global perspectives, dating from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century, are discussed with the aim of highlighting the central importance of this relationship throughout the history of children’s literature. I construct a theory of how the physical form and design of typography and other paratextual elements in children’s literature influence the construction of meaning for what Wall (1991) and Stephens (1992) call the implied child reader. In this way I argue for an equality of influence between typography and other semiotic modes in creating meaning in children’s literature. I argue further that the physical form in which language is presented, the visual language of the printed word itself, is inextricably linked to the voice which it presents. In the case of children’s literature where that voice, often that of a child narrator or character, is written or constructed by an adult producer, the visual language used to communicate that voice takes on an even greater significance. My thesis utilizes critical methodologies of narrative and visual design, alongside theories of childhood literacy and children’s literature. The main structure of the thesis involves detailed analysis of specific children’s books which exhibit unusual typographic features and/or obvious interactions between narrative voice and the physical representation of language. Narrative theory, social semiotics, and the semiotics of typography are employed to analyse typographical and paratextual elements in, and the multimodal nature of, a number of children’s texts, and how this may affect and/or influence the subjectivity of implied child readers. My methodology is underpinned by the seminal work of Gérard Genette (1997) on paratext, Theo van Leeuwen and Gunther Kress (1996) on the grammar of visual design, and Theo van Leeuwen (2006) and Nina Nørgaard (2009) on the semiotics of typography. The critical question of how child readers interact with design, and specifically typography, is addressed in Chapter 1, along with an analysis of two early texts for children which foreground literacy. An understanding of how child readers engage with typography at a visual and semiotic level is a crucial starting point to any discussion of meaning constructed through the physical appearance of text in children’s literature. Chapter 2 addresses the role of handwritten and printed text in children’s books, looking at two handmade books from the eighteenth and twentieth century respectively, before analysing the work of the contemporary picturebook makers Sara Fanelli and Oliver Jeffers. Having outlining a theoretical framework for analysing meaning