Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Dusseldorf "Heinrich Heine", course: Hauptseminar "20th Century American Short Stories", language: English, abstract: Preface: Defining the topic In literature, just like in reality, gifted children may differ from each other in every aspect except for the very existence of a special talent or very high intelligence. Still, both in life and fiction, certain types can be traced. The terms child prodigy or wunderkind evoke a child which has developed outstanding skills in a certain area like chess (cp. the protagonist of Amy Tan′s short story "Rules of the Game" or Luzhin in Nabokov′s "Luzhin′s defence"; in reality, almost every grandmaster demonstrated exceptional skills in early childhood, the most prominent example being probably Capablanca), music (McCullers′ wunderkind in the short story of the same title does not live up to a comparison with Mozart, but is also considered a piano prodigy as a child), or any other art or science. In the study "Child Prodigies and Exceptionally Early Achievers", the psychologist John Radford practically equates the former with the latter, despite the conjunction in the title. The Wikipedia offers a similar definition: "A child prodigy, or simply prodigy, is someone who is a master of one or more skills or arts at an early age. One possible definition of a prodigy is a person who, by the age of 10, displays expert proficiency in a field usually only undertaken by adults"1. As this paper intends to study prodigious children in American literature, the best source for a definitions seems to be the leading American dictionary. However, Webster′s2 is extremely vague: "a person or thing of remarkable qualities or powers: an infant prodigy"is listed as a second possibility after an even more general reference to everything extraordinary. Merriam- Webster OnLine defines a prodigy in point 2b as "a highly talented child or youth"3. Un

An account of children's literature from colonial times to the early 20th century.

In Behold the Child, Gillian Avery offers an engaging account of children's literature in America from colonial times to the early twentieth century. Exploring a variety of social, cultural, and practical forces, Avery shows how the literature of the old world influenced that of the new and describes the emergence of uniquely American styles and themes in children's books. Her topics include the early days of colonial publishing, the defenders and detractors of Mother Goose, the influence of Sunday schools and tract societies, the "chaste eroticism" of romantic fiction for young readers, and changing notions of American heroes and heroines.

Early Americans have long been considered "A People of the Book" Because the nickname was coined primarily to invoke close associations between Americans and the Bible, it is easy to overlook the central fact that it was a book-not a geographic location, a monarch, or even a shared language-that has served as a cornerstone in countless investigations into the formation and fragmentation of early American culture. Few books can lay claim to such powers of civilization-altering influence. Among those which can are sacred books, and for Americans principal among such books stands the Bible. This Handbook is designed to address a noticeable void in resources focused on analyzing the Bible in America in various historical moments and in relationship to specific institutions and cultural expressions. It takes seriously the fact that the Bible is both a physical object that has exercised considerable totemic power, as well as a text with a powerful intellectual design that has inspired everything from national religious and educational practices to a wide spectrum of artistic endeavors to our nation's politics and foreign policy. This Handbook brings together a number of established scholars, as well as younger scholars on the rise, to provide a scholarly overview--rich with bibliographic resources--to those interested in the Bible's role in American cultural formation.