THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONCEPT OF CHILDHOOD IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH CHILDREN'S LITERATURE
This article examines the evolution of concepts of childhood in English culture and their influence on the development of children's
literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Drawing on historical and literary analysis, it traces the transition from the
Puritan perception of the child as an object of moral correction to the Romantic and Victorian understanding of childhood as an
independent spiritual and cultural value. Particular attention is paid to the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's educational
philosophy on the transformation of the literary image of the child, as well as to the role of Romanticism in shaping the idea of
childhood as a period of moral purity, freedom, and creative imagination. The study is based on the works of Philippe Ariès, M. O.
Grenby, Peter Hunt, Kimberley Reynolds, Jacqueline Rose, Perry Nodelman, and Hugh Cunningham, enabling a comparison
between historical concepts of childhood and their representation in literature.
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