Negative and Positive Playspace in Treasure Island

Bushell, Sally (2022) Negative and Positive Playspace in Treasure Island. Nordic Journal of Childlike Aesthetics, 13 (1): 13.1. ISSN 2000-7493

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Abstract

This paper explores the concept of PlaySpace for literature as a shared spatial structure generated out of the adult-child dynamic at the heart of Children’s Fiction. It counters the negative dynamic between adult and child articulated by Rose, Lesnik-Oberstein and others, with a positive spatial dynamic for imaginative play and growth in which the child needs the adult as much as the adult needs the child. This shared space can function both positively and negatively. If PlaySpace requires the necessary frame of a protective adult for the child to be spatially secure, and thus play freely, then what happens when that figure is not present or turns out not to be what he or she appeared to be? The second half of the paper explores the concept further in relation to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, one of the earliest examples of fiction explicitly written for a child readership as a “story for boys” (Stevenson, [1894] 1925, p. 123). Treasure Island immediately problematises this psycho-spatial dynamic in and through Jim’s relationship to the island, and the reader’s relationship to Jim.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Nordic Journal of Childlike Aesthetics
ID Code:
209035
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
01 Nov 2023 14:20
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
16 Jul 2024 00:29