The case of "Peter Pan": [or] the impossibility of children's fiction

What does Peter Pan have to say about our conception of childhood, about how we understand the child's and our own relationship to language, sexuality, and death? What can Peter Pan tell us about the theatrical, literary, and educational institutions of which it is a part? In a new preface written especially for this edition, Rose accounts for some of the new developments since her book's first publication in 1984. She discusses some of Peter Pan's new guises and their implications. From Spielberg's Hook, to the lesbian production of the play at the London Drill Hall in 1991, to debates in the English House of Lords, to a newly claimed status as the icon of a transvestite culture, Peter Pan continues to demonstrate its bizarre renewability as a cultural fetish of our times. Peter Pan, Jacqueline Rose contends, forces us to question what it is we are doing in the endless production and dissemination of children's fiction. In a preface, written for this edition, Rose considers some of Peter Pan's new guises and their implications. From Spielberg's Hook, to the lesbian production of the play at the London Drill Hall in 1991, to debates in the English House of Lords, to a newly claimed status as the icon of transvestite culture, Peter Pan continues to demonstrate its bizarre renewability as a cultural fetish of our times Front Matter....Pages i-xviii Introduction....Pages 1-11 Peter Pan and Freud....Pages 12-41 Rousseau and Alan Garner....Pages 42-65 Peter Pan and Literature for the Child....Pages 66-86 Peter Pan and Commercialisation of the Child....Pages 87-114 Peter Pan, Language and the State....Pages 115-136 Conclusion....Pages 137-144 Back Matter....Pages 145-181 Attempts to establishes the meaning of Peter Pan - not for J.M. Barrie, but for the thousands who have continued to purchase for children version after version of the story, and who have faithfully attended the productions of the play. What is the nature of people's desire in this phenomenon? We have been reading the wrong Freud to children.