English 2033E Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Squire Trelawney, Robert Louis Stevenson, Israel Hands

• School: Western University
• Department: English
• Course: English 2033E
• Professor: Clarissa Suranyi

Document Summary

Child-adult relations are a key issue in children"s literature, where parents are often either absent or oppressive. This pattern continues in treasure island; just as alice escapes into a world of nonsense, jim hawkins constantly runs away from adult authority to have adventures on his own. Stevenson promises to give his readers all the old romance, retold / exactly in the ancient way. he is promising to follow a well-known formula, derived from authors like fenimore cooper (last of the mohicans). In another sense, though, the adventure novels stevenson refers to are like the harlequin romances of today, mass- produced on poor-quality paper, designed for cheap entertainment rather than lasting literary value. Like the modern-day harlequin, these adventure novels tended to follow a recognized formula: boy leaves home, goes to a foreign land, fights the enemy (indians, pirates, whatever), and comes home with lots of treasure. Treasure island is a deliberate attempt to fit into an existing genre in many.