INNOCENCE, EXPERIENCE AND NEGATIVE CAPABILITY: THE ROMANTIC CHILD IN PHILIP PULLMAN’S HIS DARK MATERIALS
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Abstract
Children’s literature is still heavily influenced by Romanticism and its ideology of the holiness and innocence of The Child, particularly the Wordsworthian “father of the man”, who is a figure of both great spirituality and naivety, able to intuitively grasp the inner workings of the universe. In light of this idea, and using current research into children’s literature, this paper examines Philip Pullman’s trilogy His Dark Materials (Northern Lights, 1995; The Subtle Knife, 1997; The Amber Spyglass, 2000), arguing that it offers a typically Postmodern interpretation of the Romantic Child, simultaneously affirming and subverting this ideological construct, through intertextual re-imaginings of William Wordsworth’s Platonism, William Blake’s concepts of Innocence and Experience, and John Keats’ theory of negative capability.
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