Idiosyncrasies Case

First performed in 1904 – maybe some idiosyncrasies come from idea that it was a play.

Play came from stores J.M. Barrie told to some of his friends years before that.

First published as part of a diff novel called Little White Bird. Peter Pan section of this published 19 something as Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens

1911 play turned into a novel called Peter Pan and Wendy

Barrie part of the performances for 20 years.

Narrator is adult, but a very childish adult.

Questions what it's like to be an adult, child, boy, girl, woman. Makes that idea of childhood innocence kind of weirdly, deeply suspect.

Peter Pan draws on treasure island

Walrus comes in – one of the ships that Jim Hawkins hears about.

Barrie expects readers to be familiar to all references to other stories.

One of Wendy's claims to fame is a story teller.

In a way this is a jumble of various stories.

Another predecessor to this are the Alice books.

Barrie makes neverland a place where all kinds of stories come to live as well

We have Redskins – fantasy creatures that come from other stories.

Barrie draws from all different kinds of stories even animal stories.

Neverland itself defined as a projection of the child's mind and again, have a bizarre crossover from rejection of the mind which should be intanjable but children's minds in this novel are also physical. What does Mrs. Darling do with child's minds? She dresses them up so that the worlds of thought and action are disrupted, inverted but not always.

Neverland emerges as a map. A map of the mind. Means that there is a bizarre assortment of bits. In some ways Barries neverland acknowledges the absurdities that mind is capable of. Takes on a Freudian perspective – takes idea of ID, ego, superego. Freudian psychoanalysis works well to analyse the text.

Children's stores, nonsense, fairy tales, girl's domestic novel – have an element of all these.

Emphasis on fantasy and play so a children's novels. Other argue this is a text aimed at adults rather than children. They play grownups. Wendy being a mother, Peter a father but not a husband. How to be adults. The tone of the loss of childhood so strongly present that while children are foremost it is arguable that the real audience is adults itself – those adults who want to be children again. Directs itself to adult