It’s nighttime in the playroom and the toys have gathered for a conference. For modern audiences, this scene likely evokes the imaginative world of Toy Story, the long-running film franchise about the secret lives of children’s toys, which launched to great acclaim in 1995 and recently released its fifth installment. But Woody the cowboy doll and Buzz Lightyear the action figure are not among the group assembled here. Instead, the toys gathered in young Maggy Howard’s room are simple objects crafted from rubber, tin, and wood. One is a fresh arrival from Europe. Another has survived gunfire on the Civil War battlefield. All have something to say. As the night unfolds, so do their tales, which comprise a set of narratives published in 1866 under the title “What the Playthings Said to Each Other on Midsummer Night.”Article continues after advertisement
Although critics hailed the original Toy Story for its “incredibly clever” and “inventive” concept, the film’s central conceit has roots in a literary genre that first became popular in eighteenth-century Britain: the it-narrative. Also known as object tales or novels of circulation, it-narratives relate the adventures of inanimate objects (and, less commonly, animals) as they travel across settings and between different owners. Typically narrated in first person, it-narratives test familiar borders of subject and object, inviting readers to imagine what human society might look like from the perspective of small and easily overlooked things, ranging from corkscrews to pins to literal flies on the wall.
