WRITING FOR OR WRITING ABOUT CHILDREN? THE REPRESENTATION OF CHILDHOOD IN DAVID GIAN MAILLU’S CHILDREN FICTION

Abstract

Building on Roni Natov's concept of a ‘poetics of childhood’ and on recent debates about the image of the child in literature, this paper looks at how David G. Maillu promotes relational models of interaction between adults and children, thus challenging the patriarchal concept of authority that has always conditioned people's understanding of childhood and is responsible for the unproductive tendency to retrospectively idealize childhood as an idyllic phase in life, the abuses of power which too frequently characterize the adult–child relationship. The authors dispel the myth of childhood as an age of innocence and argue that children should be seen as human agents for social change.