Abstract
While the Theory Wars are seen to have had a huge impact on English (among other disciplines) in the latter part of the twentieth century, children’s literature studies is often depicted as free of such internecine battles. However, there was a period, beginning in the 1980s with Jacqueline Rose’s The Case of Peter Pan, or the Impossibility of Children’s Fiction (1984), that many children’s literature critics felt obliged to tackle poststructuralist ideas, whether it was to reject them (and be labelled “liberal humanists”) or accept them (as did the Reading critics). This article reconsiders this contentious period, seeking to go beyond the often acerbic rhetoric and, as a result, argues that, in lumping together these poststructuralist critics, important differences in their positions have been lost. This article re-examines the period and assesses the legacy that has been inherited.