The Children’s Novel

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Hunt
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Literary System

This chapter explores the development of the children’s novel throughout the twentieth century. This period represents a change from the protection of childhood to the commodification of childhood, and from essentially gentleman-amateur publishing to highly professional production and marketing. But for all its successes, the idea that the children’s novel is necessary inferior to its adult counterpart dies hard. This is the more illogical because novels for children do not have exact counterparts in the adult literary ‘system’. From an adult point of view, all children’s literature is necessarily ‘popular’ or ‘lowbrow’, or at its ‘best’ merely ‘middlebrow’. Equally, the term ‘literature’ is not useful or relevant in the criticism of children’s novels, and the most valued texts in children’s literature may be precisely those that have the least to offer the adult.

Blackness, Imperialism, and Nationalism in Dominican Children's Literature

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-61
Author(s):  
Stacy Ann Creech
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Young People ◽  
Educational Reform ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Specific Construction

From pre-Columbian times through to the twentieth century, Dominican children's literature has struggled to define itself due to pressures from outside forces such as imperialism and colonialism. This paper examines the socio-political contexts within Dominican history that determined the kind of literature available to children, which almost exclusively depicted a specific construction of indigeneity, European or Anglo-American characters and settings, in an effort to efface the country's African roots. After the Educational Reform of 1993 was instituted, however, there has been a promising change in the field, as Dominican writers are engaged in producing literature for young people that includes more accurate representations of Blackness and multiculturalism.

Literary Dynamics in Synchronic Cross-section

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reuven Snir
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
Cross Section ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Comprehensive Understanding ◽  
Autonomous Networks ◽  
Modern Arabic ◽  
Literary System ◽  
Literary Networks

This chapter looks at the literary dynamics of Arabic literature in synchronic cross-section. Inventories of canonized and non-canonized literary texts are presented separately in three subsystems: texts for adults, children’s literature, and texts in translation. The resulting six subsystems ― three canonized and three non-canonized ― are seen as autonomous networks of relationships and as interacting literary networks on various levels. The internal and external interrelationships and interactions between the various subsystems need to be studied if we want to arrive at a comprehensive understanding of the modern Arabic literary system. The structure of the canonical center of the Arabic literary system is discussed referring to the phenomenon of Islamist literature and the reasons for its exclusion from the secular literary center.

“Who Are You?”: Modernism, Childhood, and Historical Consciousness in Faulkner’s The Wishing Tree

2017 ◽  
pp. 122-134
Author(s):  
Hannah Godwin
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
Creative Potential ◽  
Young Readers ◽  
Child Reader

This chapter considers an “uneasy yet potentially fruitful confluence” between modernist writing and children's literature in the only Faulkner tale penned specifically for children. Drawing on “the Romantic reverence for the child as transcendent and inspirational,” a reverence qualified to some degree by twentieth-century psychoanalysis and its suspicion of childhood innocence, modernist artists portrayed the child as “a vessel of consciousness” and “instinctual, intense perceptions,” and thus a source of “defamiliarizing perspectives” that fostered artistic experimentation. In The Wishing Tree, writing for young readers may have helped Faulkner awaken his creative potential. The Wishing Tree's rich mix of fantasy and history “works to imbue the child reader with a sense of historical consciousness” while recognizing her as the bearer “of a more hopeful future”.

The Use of Hermeneutic Approach in Translation Classroom – Advantages from Translation Students’ Point of View

2018 ◽  
pp. 291-317
Author(s):  
Beata Piecychna
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
Empirical Study ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Experimental Procedure ◽  
Hermeneutic Approach ◽  
Competence Acquisition

Based on an empirical study involving novice translators, this article discusses the advantages of hermeneutic approach to translation teaching (Stolze 2011) as seen from translation students’ point of view. Fifteen translation students participated in a pre-experimental procedure during which they were asked to translate a few texts of children’s literature from English into Polish. The aim of the procedure was to check and verify the influence of the hermeneutic approach on novice translators’ translation competence acquisition. Afterwards, the participants were given a special questionnaire and were asked to fill it in. The questions that they were asked to answer were concerned with their opinions relating to the hermeneutic approach to translation teaching. In the paper, opinions concerning the advantages of the approach are presented and discussed.

Children’s Folklore and Its History in Poland

Tekstualia ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 289-301
Author(s):  
Joanna Papuzińska-Beksiak
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
The Internet

The article discusses the phenomenon of children’s folklore in the age of the Internet, especially with respect to the forms of communication that the Internet facilitates. Children’s folklore has always been connected with the evolving philosophy of childhood. The turn of the turn of the twentieth century marks the emergence of serious studies in children’s oral and textual folklore. This kind of creative output has been recognized as a subcategory of children’s literature (J. Korczak, J. Brzechwa, J. Tuwim etc.). Nowadays the theory of anti-pedagogy (R. Dahl) seems to be the most closely related to children’s folklore.

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