This volume focuses on the (de)canonization processes in children’s literature, considering the construction and cultural-historical changes of canons in different children’s literatures. Chapters by international experts in the field explore a wide range of different children’s literatures from Great Britain, Germany, Scandinavia, the Low Countries, Eastern and Central Europe, as well as from Non-European countries such as Australia, Israel, and the United States. Situating the inquiry within larger literary and cultural studies conversations about canonicity, the contributors assess representative authors and works that have encountered changing fates in the course of canon history. Particular emphasis is given to sociological canon theories, which have so far been under-represented in canon research in children’s literature. The volume therefore relates historical changes in the canon of children’s literature not only to historical changes in concepts of childhood but to more encompassing political, social, economic, cultural, and ideological shifts. This volume’s comparative approach takes cognizance of the fact that, if canon formation is an important cultural factor in nation-building processes, a comparative study is essential to assessing transnational processes in canon formation. This book thus renders evident the structural similarities between patterns and strategies of canon formation emerging in different children’s literatures.
Table of Contents:
Contents
List of Figures
Series Editor’s Foreword
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Canon Studies and Children’s Literature
Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer and Anja Müller
Prelude: A Tale of Canons and Classics – Definition Impossible?
Peter Hunt
Part I
Canons, Cultural Capital and Policies of Community Building
Chapter 1 Nation Building and Children’s Literary Canons: The Israeli Test-Case
Yael Darr
Chapter 2 Canon Formation and Social Imaginaries in British Children’s Literature
Anja Müller, Simone Herrmann and Franziska Burstyn
Chapter 3 Firing the Canon! Geoffrey Trease’s Campaign for an Alternative Children’s Canon in 1930’s Britain
Kimberley Reynolds
Chapter 4 Canon Formation in the Soviet Union: The Case of Swift as an Author of a Children’s Classic
Michael Düring
Chapter 5 Historical Twists and Turns in the Polish Canon of Children’s Literature
Anna Maria Czernow and Dorota Michułka
Part II
The Challenges of the Canon: Genre, Gender, Avant-garde
Chapter 6 The Origins of Modernism in Fairy Tale: Hans Christian Andersen’s Authorship and Canon Studies
Helene Høyrup
Chapter 7 Canon and German Avant-garde Children’s Literature of the 1920s and 1930s: A Paradoxical Relationship
Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer
Chapter 8 Genre, Gender and Canon Formation: The Case of Laura Richards
Etti Gordon Ginzburg
Chapter 9 "Girls Like it Most": Challenging Gendered Canons and Paracanons in the Case of The Secret Garden
Alison Waller
Part III
Keeping the Gate – Agents in Canon Formation
Chapter 10 The Perks of Being Talked About: Norms of Evaluation Informing the Canonization of Astrid Lindgren’s Oeuvre in the Dutch Language Area
Sara Van den Bossche
Chapter 11 The Junior Literary Guild and the Making of New Canonical Works: The Case of Waterless Mountain
Anne Morey
Chapter 12 Visions and Values: The Children’s Book Council of Australia’s Prizing of Picture Books in the Twenty-First Century
Erica Hateley
Chapter 13 Finally Coming Together? The Bridging Role of the Adolescent Novel in the Netherlands
Helma Lierop-Debrauwer
Editors and Contributors
Index
