Ann Alston - Roald Dahl

Well worth reading and full of valuable insights that will make this volume of use to students and scholars alike. - Michele Stepto, Yale University, USA

An authoritative collection of essays which together offer a wide range of critical approaches to a substantial proportion of Dahls work. - Elizabeth Thiel, Roehampton University, UK

Roald Dahl is one of the worlds best-loved authors. More than twenty years after his death, his books are still highly popular with children and have inspired numerous feature films yet he remains a controversial figure.

This volume, the first collection of academic essays ever to be devoted to Dahls work, brings together a team of well-known scholars of childrens literature to explore the man, his books for children and his complex attitudes towards various key subjects. Including essays on education, crime, Dahls humour, his long-term collaboration with the artist Quentin Blake, and film adaptations, this fascinating collection offers a unique insight into the writer and his world.

Introduction by Catherine Butler. Essays by: Ann Alston, Peter Hunt, Beverley Pennell, Pat Pinsent, June Pulliam, David Rudd, Carole Scott, Jackie E. Stallcup, Deborah Thacker, Heather Worthington.

Ann Alston and Catherine Butler are both Senior Lecturers in English at the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK, where they specialise in childrens literature.

This latest series of New Casebooks consists of brand new critical essays specially commissioned to provide students with fresh thinking about key texts and writers. Like the original series, the volumes embrace a range of approaches designed to illuminate the rich interchange between critical theory and critical practice.

New Casebooks

Collections of all new critical essays

CHILDRENS LITERATURE

ROBERT CORMIER

Edited by Adrienne E. Gavin

ROALD DAHL

Edited by Ann Alston & Catherine Butler

C. S. LEWIS: THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA

Edited by Michelle Ann Abate & Lance Weldy

J. K. ROWLING: HARRY POTTER

Edited by Cynthia J. Hallett & Peggy J. Huey

FURTHER TITLES ARE CURRENTLY IN PREPARATION

For a full list of published titles in the past format of the New Casebooks series, visit the series page at www.palgrave.com

New Casebooks Series

Series Standing Order

ISBN 9780333717028 hardcover

ISBN 9780333693452 paperback

(Outside North America only)

You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above.

Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England

New Casebooks

ROALD DAHL

Edited by

ANN ALSTON & CATHERINE BUTLER

Selection and editorial matter Ann Alston & Catherine Butler 2012

Introduction and individual chapters (in order) Catherine Butler; Deborah Thacker; Jackie E. Stallcup; David Rudd; Pat Pinsent; Ann Alston; Beverley Pennell; Heather Worthington; June Pulliam; Carole Scott; Peter Hunt 2012

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.

No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 610 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.

Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The authors have asserted their rights to be identifed as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published 2012 by

PALGRAVE MACMILLAN

Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.

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Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.

ISBN 9780230283602 hardback

ISBN 9780230283619 paperback

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12

Printed and bound in China

CB: To my mother, Isobel Butler

AA: To my father, Ralph Alston

Series Editors Preface

Welcome to the latest series of New Casebooks.

Each volume now presents brand new essays specially written for university and other students. Like the original series, the new-look New Casebooks embrace a range of recent critical approaches to the debates and issues that characterize the current discussion of literature.

Each editor has been asked to commission a sequence of original essays which will introduce the reader to the innovative critical approaches to the text or texts being discussed in the collection. The intention is to illuminate the rich interchange between critical theory and critical practice that today underpins so much writing about literature.

Editors have also been asked to supply an introduction to each volume that sets the scene for the essays that follow, together with a list of further reading which will enable readers to follow up issues raised by the essays in the collection.

The purpose of this new-look series, then, is to provide students with fresh thinking about key texts and writers while encouraging them to extend their own ideas and responses to the texts they are studying.

Martin Coyle

Notes on Contributors

Ann Alston lectures at the University of the West of England, Bristol, where she specialises in childrens literature. Her work covers nineteenth- and twentieth-century childrens literature and has, to date, focused more specifically on the construction of the family. Ann Alston is the author of The History of the Family in English Childrens Literature (Routledge, 2008), and has written articles on food, spaces and the family which have been published in various collections of essays and journals. Alongside a continued interest in nineteenth-century concepts of the family with regard to authors such as Charlotte Yonge she is currently researching aspects of Welsh childrens literature.

Catherine Butler is Associate Professor of English at the University of the West of England. Her critical work has appeared in, amongst other places, Childrens Literature in Education and Childrens Literature Association Quarterly, and has been honored with a ChLA Article Honor Award, and a Mythopoeic Scholarship Award (for Four British Fantasists (Scarecrow/ChLA, 2006)). Catherine was the editor of