Abstract
Mystery lies in both the knowable but as yet unknown and in the unknowable. Mystery provokes questions: who? how? why? Mystery demands answers: solution, in the form of those questions being answered, or resolution, in the form of acceptance of mystery as an insoluble but integral element of life. As Albert Einstein suggests, the mysterious is a ‘fundamental emotion’, central to human experience. It lies at the heart of all human endeavour, scientific as well as artistic and, as Basil Hallward in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray suggests, it makes life ‘delightful’. It is also fundamental to the texts which first stimulate our imaginings of our world, and writers of children’s literature have great freedom to enhance and foreground the mysterious in their work. Perhaps because adulthood is a mystery to children and childhood has become a mystery to adults and neither can ever ‘solve’ the other state, mystery has a particularly strong presence in children’s texts. Despite this presence, however, mystery has had surprisingly little critical attention paid to it in connection with children’s literature; this book seeks to redress that lack by examining the ways in which mystery is used in children’s literature. Delving into the secrets of literary mystery and assessing critically the functions of mystery in writing for children, the essays in this collection suggest critical ‘solutions’ to the questions that mysteries raise.
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead and his eyes are dimmed.
(Albert Einstein 11)
And when I asked them if they preferred books to be funny or exciting, they all with one accord said that what they liked best was a mystery.
(Joan Aiken 30)
I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvellous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it.
(Oscar Wilde 4)
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Works cited
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© 2001 Adrienne E. Gavin and Christopher Routledge
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Gavin, A.E., Routledge, C. (2001). Mystery in Children’s Literature from the Rational to the Supernatural: an Introduction. In: Gavin, A.E., Routledge, C. (eds) Mystery in Children’s Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780333985137_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780333985137_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-42374-3
Online ISBN: 978-0-333-98513-7
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