J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Andrew Nash (University of Reading)
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Peter Pan

is one of those works that defies – and often defeats – critical summary. Because of its complex textual evolution, its conspicuous appeal to mythic status, the ideas it projects about authorship and creation, the various cultural transformations that it has received, any attempt to pin it down is not only difficult but self-defeating because it goes against the very grain of the work.

Firstly, there is the problem of which text and whose text (belonging to which author) we are talking about. The character Peter Pan first appears in a novel The Little White Bird (1902) where he forms part of a story that the narrator is telling inside the novel to a little boy. These chapters were later extrapolated and published on their own, with minor modifications, as Peter Pan in

2417 words

Citation: Nash, Andrew. "Peter Pan". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 June 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=2833, accessed 19 March 2024.]

2833 Peter Pan 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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