What Rough Beast. . .? Narrative relationships and moral education

Abstract The discussion is concerned with issues arising in the use of fictions written for children in moral education. It focuses on the various ways in which adult narrators address the child readers of such texts and offers a model of the narrative relationships thus established. The analysis of these relationships and consideration of their pedagogical implications is set within a broader discussion of shifts in the contemporary concept of childhood. Drawing initially on current media representations and finally on problematic representations of ?beastly? behaviour in children's fictions, attention is directed, beyond pedagogical strategies, to existential questions which new and emerging relationships in children's fiction currently raise for teachers and other adults concerned with moral education