Nedslag i børnelitteraturforskningen 9. (= New Research into Children's Literature 9). - Cph. RUC, 2008. - 164 p.

English Summary

Nina Christensen’s article ”Om børnelitteratur, tekstbegreber og vurderingskriterier. Et essay” [Children’s Literature, Textual Terms and Assessment Criteria. An Essay] opens with a discussion of textual and literary terms for the purpose of assessing children’s literature. The advantages and disadvantages of using ‘børnebog’ [children’s book] and ‘børnelitteratur’ [children’s literature] as super-ordinate terms are discussed, while the use of the term ‘literature’ in a narrow, normative sense is preferred to the broad description ‘tekster for børn’ [texts for children]. Against this background, the main approaches to the assessment of children’s literature are discussed: sender-orientated, work-orientated, receiver-orientated and context-orientated approaches. In conclusion, the writer points to the need for the assessment of children’s literature to become the subject of further professional discussion, and she indicates a number of questions which such discussions might use a starting point.

Joseph T. Thomas’s article “Børnedigtere og skolegårdsdigtning” [Children’s Poets and Schoolyard Poetry] deals with poetry for children and particularly the interface between poetry written by adults, which is read in the school’s literature classes, and the children’s own literary production in the form of what Thomas calls ‘skolegårdsdigtning’ [schoolyard poetry]. Thomas treats children’s oral poetry in accordance with Bakhtin’s concept of the carnival. He points out how children’s poems often turn power relationships and hierarchies on their heads and how they tackle taboo subjects in a grotesque and exaggerated fashion. The writer describes how the teaching of literature tends to be rooted in the poem as an elevated form of literature, and gives examples of parodies of canonised works. In conclusion, Thomas calls for a greater degree of attention to be given to children’s poems and the opportunities for including them in literature classes.

In the article “Højtlæsningens ABC. En undersøgelse af pædagogers litteraturopfattelse og læsevaner” [The ABC of Reading Aloud. A Survey of Carers’ Understanding of Literature and Reading Habits] Marianne Eskebæk Larsen presents the results from her survey as part of the reading enjoyment project Den levende bog [The Living Book].This project succeeded in bringing to the fore modern children’s literature relatively quickly and with modest resources, which is encouraging given the marginalised position it normally occupies with parents, carers and teachers. Carers have become more aware of the choice of books open to them and the various options that exist for reading aloud. It was difficult, however, to move the reading aloud activity in the direction indicated in the literature teaching project. The article points out that reading aloud in day-care institutions can be divided into several kinds of readings, each with their own purpose and justification. The carer must first consider which book they will use according to the listeners and then decide on the method with reference to the respective text, audience and purpose. The discussion then continues to examine how reading aloud can relate to reading research and closes by referring to ‘visual literacy’ as a potentially fruitful area for research in the future development of literature teaching at day-care institutions.

Svein Slettan’s article "Mannen sett gjennom kvinnen. Menn, maskulinitet og kvinneidentitet i Bente Clods Englekraft-trilogi (2000-2002)" [Men as Seen by Women. Men, Masculinity and Women’s Identity in Bente Clod’s Englekraft Trilogy] looks at the representation of masculinity in young adult novels written by women authors and with a female protagonist. With reference to earlier research into gender and popular literature, Sletten shows how Bente Clod’s books make us of and also challenge familiar formulae of genre and culture. First of all, Sletten focuses on the two male roles in Clod’s novels: the father and the boyfriend. He demonstrates how these male roles function in a melodramatic context with an emphasis on strong emotions and conflicts of values. A fixed pattern repeats itself in the novels: the female protagonist is left by men who pursue their own interests or is destroyed by a male criminal culture. Nevertheless she fights her way out of the role of victim and develops her identity with support from a stable female community. Like a modern Cinderella, she goes from poverty and humiliation to success, crowned with a new love. Secondly, Slettan shows that Clod’s novels, alongside the formulaic images, also have a more nuanced picture of men and masculinity, as revealed by the different masculinity types that exist side by side and the way in which men can change. The article demonstrates, in summary, that the portrayal of gender functions as a cultural discourse with a range of potential stage settings.

Janus Neumann’s article ”Barnet i den ironiske labyrint. Når ironien slippes løs i børnelitteraturen” [The Child in the Ironic Labyrinth. When Irony is Let Loose in Children’s Literature] contains some reflections about and an analysis of irony in children’s literature. In the article there are several examples of irony in children’s literature and the writer describes the consequences this has for the child reader. He argues that irony can be a point of access for liberating the child’s imagination. The article is based on the notion of Socratic irony during the Age of Enlightenment and Romanticism, with special emphasis on Søren Kierkegaard’s dissertation Om Begrebet Ironi med stadigt Hensyn til Sokrates [The Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates] (1841). A further perspective is given with mention of the German philosopher Friedrich Schlegel, who sees philosophy as irony’s real home. Via Schlegel the focus turns to the American literary critic Paul de Man and the Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, whose carnival theories are based around the medieval role of the fool. The fool thus becomes an essential figure in the article’s two analyses of children’s literature: “Lille Virgil” [Little Vergil] by Ole Lund Kirkegaard (1967) and Bent Haller’s “Jamen, så er han jo ligesom os” [Well, then he’s just like us] (1999) respectively.

Ivy York Møller-Christensen’s article “H.C. Andersen og Heinrich Hoffmann.

Modernitetens æstetiske pionerer” [Hans Christian Andersen and Heinrich Hoffmann. Modernity’s Aesthetic Pioneers] discusses two major children’s writers and the connections between their work. Andersen and Hoffmann did not know each other, but nevertheless both were involved in a boundary-breaking movement. The 1830s saw the beginning of a reaction against the heavily didactic children’s literature of the time, and the two writers, each in their own way, stood out as pioneers in this clash. Andersen, in a completely new way, took his starting point in the child’s view of the world and established a plain-spoken orality while Hoffmann, for his part, parodied the children’s literature of the time. Common to both writers was a subjectification of the child, and this is the article’s main thesis, that this very subjectification forms the conceptual pivotal point for a real paradigm shift. This shift, on the cusp between the Age of Enlightenment and Romanticism, forms the nucleus for the growth of modernism in children’s literature, which reaches its peak in the anti-authoritarian children’s writing of the 1960s and 1970s. The subjectification process intensified and can be traced right through to today where the child, to an even greater degree, is active and on equal terms with adults.