The connection between childhood and poetry runs deep. And yet, poetry written for children has been neglected by criticism and resists prevailing theories of children’s literature. Drawing on Walter ...Ong’s theory of orality and on Iain McGilChrist’s work on brain function, this book develops a new theoretical framework for the study of children’s poetry. From Tongue to Text argues that the poem is a multimodal form that exists in the borderlands between the world of experience and the world of language and between orality and literacy – places that children themselves inhabit. Engaging with a wide range of poetry from nursery rhymes and Christina Rossetti to Michael Rosen and Carol Ann Duffy, Debbie Pullinger demonstrates how these ‘tactful’ works are shaped by the dynamics of orality and textuality.
The study of childhood stage, as a specific concept and period in human life, does not have a long history. According to Philippe Aries, there has been no reference to the concept of childhood in the ...Middle ages. Unlike in the past, children as intelligent beings are now considered to deserve special attention and analysis. In the past, a child was like an unseen subject, and no value was given to childhood as a unique period of life, however, this view has changed dramatically because of social organizations such as family, education, and the cyber world. One of the significant contexts for thinking and working for children is literature, and among different literary genres, poetry has a specific situation. Contrary to the present viewpoint in the Iranian Kurdistan, children’s poetry is not easily achieved. The poets are required to have extensive expertise and experience in childhood studies. The main argument of the present study is that Kurdish children’s poetry does not consider the sensitivity of the childhood period and is not written according to children’s taste but to adult’s taste and desire and with minimal knowledge. This paper will first explore the concepts of child and childhood, then will discuss the characteristics of children’s poetry and try to study several books and pieces of poetry, written and published in Iran in the past few years.
