"To Touch The Real" Of English Nursery Rhymes

When it comes to nursery rhymes, most people think of them as innocent, joyfulgames played in childhood. As a matter of fact, most of the nursery rhymes that havebecome so popular with the children were never intended for them at first. It can besafely stated that the overwhelming majority of nursery rhymes were not in the firstplace composed for children; in fact many were survivals of an adult code of attitudes,and in their original wording were, by the present standards, strikingly unsuitable forthose of tender years. Most of the rhymes began as folk songs or ballads sung intaverns. These songs (rhymes) always were written to mock religious leaders or togossip about kings and queens. Nursery rhymes were studied in the past few centuriesas a way to help children learn their alphabet and numbers. These rhymes have beenproven effective in helping children improve their language skills.By means of details focusing and texts interpretation, the author of this papermanages to unveil the hidden historical and social messages in Mother Goose and thusreveal the deep meanings from political, social and historical aspects, proving that thechildren ballad is also endowed with the spirit of holding the historical reality over thewords and between the lines as other genres. The author takes several representativeballads and has detailed analysis of them. With the theoretical support of NewHistoricism, the author discovers that nursery rhymes are like mirrors, which canreflect the history. History casts its history in texts, while texts also help people to seethe inner side of history, and the margin discourse oppressed by the dominatingideology. That is to say, in nursery rhymes, we can see through and find the historicaltruth under the cover of naive children’s songs.Nursery rhyme, as the study object, is defined and introduced in the first part. Andthe second part focuses on the study review of the related texts. The third part dealswith the theoretical basis of New Historicism. With the object and tool, the fourth and fifth part concerns about social phenomena and historical events in the past. At last, theauthor points out the indispensable role of nursery rhymes in human civilization. Fromthe discussion, the author discovers that there is rich and meaningful messagescontained in nursery rhymes and they can serve as a mirror for us to know the historyand understand society.