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| 0662-3115-01 | Where the Wild Tales are: Children's Literature in the Age o | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| FACULTY OF HUMANITIES | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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University credit hours: 2.0
Course description
Only in recent decades has Western children’s literature begun to adopt—gradually and hesitantly— some post-modern characteristics, a move which had heretofore been inhibited by the traditional structure of this genre, whose focus was on imparting knowledge, values, and guidelines for proper behavior to their intended audience—children. This put writers of children’s literature into a quandary when faced with post-modern relativism and its systematic undermining of organizational principals of reality. Despite the contemporary trend, children’s literature, which for almost two hundred years had provided guidance, education, comfort, and even therapeutic value to young readers, refused, as it were, to give up its responsibility, authority and influence in order to present a reality which was chaotic and open to interpretation.
However, the cultural and intellectual revolution that flooded the Western world in the 60s and 70s of the last century did not skip children’s literature and, despite the hesitance, impinged upon it definite signs of change. By way of the ‘post-colonial’ ideological prism, changes that occurred in the post-modern perception of the child and childhood will be examined, along with its effects on the inter-generational struggle, and subsequent influence on the themes now prevalent in books for young children. The poetic prism will focus on how the shattering of traditional conventions affect the plot, characters and narrator of contemporary children’s literature. Also discussed will be the changing role of illustration in children’s literature, and the transition from the printed format to digital media.
However, the cultural and intellectual revolution that flooded the Western world in the 60s and 70s of the last century did not skip children’s literature and, despite the hesitance, impinged upon it definite signs of change. By way of the ‘post-colonial’ ideological prism, changes that occurred in the post-modern perception of the child and childhood will be examined, along with its effects on the inter-generational struggle, and subsequent influence on the themes now prevalent in books for young children. The poetic prism will focus on how the shattering of traditional conventions affect the plot, characters and narrator of contemporary children’s literature. Also discussed will be the changing role of illustration in children’s literature, and the transition from the printed format to digital media.