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SUMMARY:The miserly adult and the eternal child: an existentialist reading
  of The Little Prince - Clémentine Beauvais\, Junior Research Fellow at H
 omerton College 
DTSTART:20131120T170000Z
DTEND:20131120T183000Z
UID:TALK46571@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Lucian Stephenson
DESCRIPTION:The character of the Little Prince\, in Antoine de St Exupéry
 's novel (1942)\, is often cited as an outstanding example of puer aeternu
 s - eternal child. Such characters are said to be atemporal or extra-tempo
 ral\, expressing adult nostalgia for idealised\, long-lost childhoods. Thi
 s seminar questions this claim from an existentialist perspective. What if
  such children were not atemporal\, but the opposite - perfectly on time? 
 Contrasting the temporality of the Little Prince with those of key adult c
 haracters in the story\, I examine the novel's portrayal of distorted adul
 t temporalities. These perceptions of time\, and the ways the adult charac
 ters deal with them\, delineate strategies deployed by the adult conscious
 ness to soothe the temporal tension characteristic of the existential cond
 ition. This exploration leans on Nicolas Grimaldi's (1971) analysis of the
  miser\, a metaphor for the adult impulse to preserve intact the time left
  of childhood as the currency for unrealised possibilities. \n\nBiography\
 n\nClémentine Beauvais works on children's literature theory and the phil
 osophy of childhood. Her particular research interests revolve around the 
 concepts of the didactic discourse\, the adult-child relationship\, and th
 e different temporal imaginations of childhood and adulthood.  Her doctora
 l thesis\, supervised by Maria Nikolajeva\, explored politically committed
  children's literature from a Sartrian perspective. She is currently a Jun
 ior Research Fellow at Homerton College. \n
LOCATION:Room Boulind 8 and 9\, Mary Allan Building\, Homerton College\, H
 ills Road\, Cambridge CB2 8PQ
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