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Nothing More Delicious: Food As Temptation In Children's Literature, Mary A. Stephens

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Although many critics and theorists, including Roland Barthes, have discussed food in literature, little attention has been paid to the food-as-temptation story in children’s literature. In Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Neil Gaiman’s Coraline food is used as temptation for child protagonists, a tool to lure them into doing evil deeds or being generally mischievous. Some characters, like Alice, act as the tempters as well as the tempted, while others, like Edmund, wait passively for rescue. Coraline breaks this …