Abstract
Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, numerous successful Anglo-American novels have portrayed events though the eyes of child protagonists who epitomize Romantic ideals of childhood innocence, naivety, playfulness and curiosity in surprisingly affirmative ways. This article explores how Emma Donoghue's novel Room (2010) links such an updated model of Romantic childhood to epistemological ideas ranging from classical philosophy (Plato) to poststructuralist thinking (Baudrillard) by employing a radically ignorant child character in captivity as the narrator and focaliser of her novel. Although Donoghue makes use of an affirmative model of Romantic childhood, her novel equally points to its factitious and obsolete quality as a cultural construct because it can only be temporarily contained in isolation.
Keywords
captivity, childhood, Emma Donoghue, epistemology, hyperreality, innocence, perception, Room
How to Cite
Dinter, S., (2013) “Plato's Cave Revisited: Epistemology Perception and Romantic Childhood in Emma Donoghue's Room (2010)”, C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-Century Writings 2(1), 53–69.