Seminar Series - Representing Childhood

How has the image of childhood been represented in different cultures at various times in history? What meanings have been placed on the figure of the child in the past and how do these differ from present and possible future representations? Do adults and children perceive childhood in different ways?

Keith Hopper (St. Clare's tutor in Film Studies and Literature) discusses a masterpiece of twentieth-century metafiction, Irish author Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman.

Keith is a leading authority on Irish author Flann O'Brien, whose novel is increasingly acknowledged as one of the great masterpieces of the twentieth century and briefly appears in the TV series Lost, which has opened it up to a whole new generation of younger readers.

We are ready to believe all kinds of sinister things about children, since they seem like a half-alien race in our midst. They have the uncanniness of things which resemble us in some ways but not in others. Because children are not fully of the social game, they can be seen as innocent; but for just the same reason they can be regarded as the spawn of Satan. (Terry Eagleton)

October 2010