Morality in Children's Literature

I was ruminating on the tension between there being no clear moral to the end of a children's story and a very clear moral theme. I also read through blogs and Sutter mentions Sidney, so I followed up. In Sir Phillip Sidney's Apology for Poetry he says that poetry delights in order to teach and he would consider poetry, but in our case Children's literature, a tool to inspire people to virtue, ahem, The Book of Virtues. My mom happened to love reading different stories and poems out of it to me and my brother as young kids. Sidney says, "Now, for the poet, he nothing affirms, and therefore never lieth." (150, Richter). Nothing that we read is false because none of it is said to be true in the first place, in terms of poetry and Children's literature, however historians who affirm lots of "facts" cannot escape from lies. (A New Historicist would argue there are no, so called, facts) So instead of being true or false in Children's literature, it is what it is. So then I guess, as I learned from Dr. Sexson in Classical Literature, the moral of the story is the story. I think that would be very comforting to a child because no one likes to be lied to or decieved, especially not children.

Even if there is no moral to the story, strictly speaking like a virtuous theme, then that is okay. Percy Shelly says, in A Defence of Poetry,

"Poetry enlarges the circumfrence of the imagination by replentishing it with thoughts of ever new delight, which have the power of attracting and assimilating of their own nature all other thoughts, and which form new intervals and interstices whose void forever craves fresh food" (351 Richter).

We don't need a moral at the end of the story to gleen something good for us. He also says, "The great instrument of moral good is the imagination; and poetry administers to the effect by acting upon the cause" (351 Richter). So all literature stimulating and providing imagination is of moral value. So then again the moral of the story happens to be the story. Would this be that same for art and music I wonder?


The Critical Tradition, David H. Richter pages 150, 351

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