Microsoft Word Hollie Adams ma thesis

 
Comparative Children’s Literature 
This dissertation aims to analyse children’s literature in relation to gender 
representation in the more recent past. Herein, I will not solely focus on one culture or 
one period of time as I wish to ask the question whether authors of different cultural 
backgrounds have abandoned patriarchal, sexist ideas in their novels in favour of a more 

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gender neutral, progressive type of children’s literature to the same degree. This 
dissertation will note the progression by comparing selected British and German 
classics from the period before and after the feminist revolutions of the 1960s and 
1970s. To attempt to answer this question, I will take a comparative approach.
There are few scholarly articles that apply the approaches, methodologies and 
theories of comparative literature to children’s literature as Emer O’Sullivan argues, 
however, the approach has gained in importance in recent years (1). As previously 
stated, children’s literature is a hugely important genre and thus, there is much to be 
compared within its confines. O’Sullivan states that “literary epochs, periods and 
movements, genres” etc., have given way to an “uncertainty of category”, one that 
makes comparative literature complex (12). Despite this, O’Sullivan puts forward a 
“structural proposition for the evolving discipline of comparative children’s literature”, 
one in which I wish to follow (12).
O’Sullivan declares that comparative children’s literature must discuss 
questions in relation to the system itself, “its particular structure of communication, and 
the social, economic, and cultural conditions which have to prevail in order for a 
children’s literature to develop” (12). Herein, I will briefly discuss children’s literature 
in Britain and Germany from 1945-2000, in order to understand the development of the 
genre in these historical conditions. O’Sullivan further declares that “comparative 
children’s literature, like mainstream comparative literature, must consider those 
phenomena that cross the borders of a particular literature in order to see them in their 
respective linguistic, cultural, social and literary context” (12). The phenomena within 
this dissertation is gender, which will be analysed in order to explore the concept across 
cultures. It may be noted that in literary studies, there was a “cultural turn” which “led 
to an interdisciplinary opening in children’s literature” studies that explored “historical, 

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social and ideological factors” (11). However, such studies were “not strictly 
comparative in that they deal with literature of one cultural/linguistic context”, I seek 
to explore interdisciplinary matters in different cultures, languages, and time frames 
(11).
In O’Sullivan’s work, she states that “until the 1960’s, discussion of children’s 
literature was almost entirely confined to the didactic context, in relation to teacher 
training” (46). Meanwhile, in Britain, there was not even a chair of children’s literature 
studies until the 1990’s, and so “for a long time children’s literature featured at tertiary 
level predominantly in the training of librarians”, this has thus affected the way in which 
children’s literature has been studied (47). The comparative analysis within this 
dissertation aims to contribute to a comparative history of post-war children’s literature 
in two European countries by approaching fantasy children’s literature and the issue of 
gender representation.