Literature

17 pages, 263 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Challenging Voices: Listening to Australian Women Writers across Time to Understand the Dynamics Shaping Creative Expression for Women Writing Today

by Odette Kelada

Literature 2024, 4(3), 197-213; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4030015 - 31 Aug 2024

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Abstract

This article argues for the critical need to value the voices and creative work of contemporary women writers in Australia. Historically, women writing in Australia have endured erasure, dismissal, and suppression. I argue that there is still, in the modern period, a continued lack of awareness, recognition and education on Australian women’s writing despite targeted awards and the achievements of the feminist movement. This piece reflects back across time, drawing on interviews I conducted and PhD thesis research with women writers in Australia at the turn of the twenty-first century, and maps how the legacies of gendered notions of writers impacted women at this pivotal era to consider what this may mean for women writing today. It also explores how feminist theories such as écriture féminine are helpful for framing and understanding the responses of Australian women writers to the shifting notions of sexual difference and agency in writing. This article aims to provide insights into the complexities of liberation for women from the past to modern times, and the impact of gender on creative expression in Australia across changing social periods. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Women’s Writing in Modern Times)

13 pages, 302 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Exploring the Agential Child in Death-Themed Picturebooks: A Comparative Analysis across Cultures

by Cheng-Ting Chang

Literature 2024, 4(3), 184-196; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4030014 - 12 Aug 2024

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Abstract

The status of adults and children in children’s literature is a complex, long-debated issue. Marah Gubar introduced the kinship model, challenging the notion of children as voiceless and emphasizing their agency as human beings. This study argues that the model can serve as a fruitful framework for examining the representation of children in death-themed picturebooks because the phenomenon of death places children and adults in a relatively equal position and implies similarities between them. It analyzes 11 picturebooks featuring agential child protagonists and published in the UK, the US, Japan, and Taiwan. The analysis is directed at four representations: the independent child, the atomized child, the helpful child, and the analogous child and adult. Each exploration describes whether and how the texts illustrate the model’s key points: (1) a child’s voice and agency; (2) the relatedness, connection, and similarity between children and adults; and (3) the gradual, erratic, and variable nature of development from childhood to adulthood. The findings highlight the heterogeneity of agential children across cultures and suggest that scrutinizing childhood requires engagement with adulthood. This perspective inspires us to reconsider the adult-child dichotomy and expand our imagination of what children can be across cultures. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Constructions of Childhood(s) in Fiction and Nonfiction for Children)

12 pages, 6293 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Econormative Childhoods in Wimmelbooks on the Four Seasons: Analysis of Central European Wordless Informational Picturebooks

by Krzysztof Rybak

Literature 2024, 4(3), 172-183; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4030013 - 31 Jul 2024

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Abstract

More and more informational picturebooks on environmental topics have been published in recent years, many focusing on the inevitable climate change. Conversely, there is still a tendency in contemporary picturebooks to represent the climate traditionally, irrespective of actual climate change. A particularly interesting case is the representation of the seasons, especially in books aimed at the youngest ‘readers’, such as wimmelbooks. Not only are they crucial for developing emergent and visual literacy, but they also contain normative images that constitute a prototype for the child. The ‘norms’ picturebooks present are based on the authors’ ideologies that constitute all informational picturebooks as their authors interpret facts. Hence, this article aims to analyse the visual strategies used and the ideologies expressed by wimmelbooks from Poland and Germany in representing the seasons (Marcin Strzembosz’s Jaki to miesiąc? [2002] and Ali Mitgutsch’s Mein Wimmel-Bilderbuch: Frühling, Sommer, Herbst und Winter [2007], among others). The preliminary research shows that the authors seem to propose traditional, idyllic, ecologically normative images of the environment, which I propose to call econormative (inspired by the word ‘aetonormative’), such as snowy winters, sunny summers, etc.; hence, wimmelbooks seem to assent to stereotypical depictions of the seasons associated with the notion of ideal childhoods set in econormative environments. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Constructions of Childhood(s) in Fiction and Nonfiction for Children)

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12 pages, 254 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Children’s Nonfiction, Biography, and Their Responsibilities to Children

by Joe Sutliff Sanders

Literature 2024, 4(3), 160-171; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4030012 - 30 Jul 2024

Viewed by 1014

Abstract

A debate over whether children’s nonfiction should “speculate” was launched in 2011. Understood within the context of changing demands on children’s nonfiction, it reveals a contested construction of childhood and suggests that the rules of critical engagement might be different in different genres [...] Read more.

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Constructions of Childhood(s) in Fiction and Nonfiction for Children)

13 pages, 1779 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Sámi on Display: Sámi Representations in an Early Nonfiction Book for Children

by Inger-Kristin Larsen Vie

Literature 2024, 4(3), 147-159; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4030011 - 27 Jun 2024

Viewed by 1015

Abstract

Lisbeth Bergh’s nonfiction picturebook En lappefamilie: tekst og bilder fra Nordland (A Lappish family: text and pictures from Nordland) from 1905 is one of the first Norwegian nonfiction picturebooks for children about the life of Sámi. It contains Bergh’s own illustrations and text passages in Norwegian, English, and German, which signals that the book addresses a national and international audience. Simultaneously, the book is published in an era characterized by an increasing interest in indigenous tourism, demonstrated through the popularity of world exhibitions and «human zoos». In this article, I explore Bergh’s nonfiction picturebook in the light of “human zoos” and “living exhibitions” at the beginning of the 1900s and how her book alludes to the depiction of the Sámi for entertainment and information purposes. My close reading shows how the book reflects the categorization and systematization of the world and of exotic ethnic groups at the time. Furthermore, the reading confirms the book’s very distinctive position in Norwegian children’s literature history, and how it may have acquired a particular role in the promotion of Norwegian tourism at the beginning of the 20th century. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Constructions of Childhood(s) in Fiction and Nonfiction for Children)

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Literature, Volume 4, Issue 3 (September 2024) – 5 articles

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