兒童文學批評理論

1. 兒童文學批評理論 Criticism and Children Literature 報告者：劉忠岳 學號：9500106 日期：2007/10/18

2. Criticism and Children’s Literature • Critical Theory Concerning itself with everything in and surrounding text. • Children’s Literature A field which takes in every genre of writing. Both are new, important, on the fringes of conventional academia and to literary world.

3. Academics V.S Laypersons Theory seems to… • To Academics challenges conventional views be of little practical use be self-serving and nihilistic • To Laypersons be pretentious irrelevant

4. Academics V.S Laypersons Children Literature is… • To Academics a non-subject not a fit subject for academic study • To Laypersons the warm and friendly business of educating and entertaining without any sort of theory

5. The major consequences of theory, like feminism, cultural studies, etc., is useful and fresh method of looking at texts. • Might benefit from an insight into what is happening in texts, or what is happening with texts.

6. The Children’s Literature Association of America has published a suggested canon of Children’s Literature : Touchstones. • Children’ Literature is available to criticism as well as to amateur. • Children’s Literature is commonly judged in terms of their use.

7. Plurality of Meaning • Now being recognized as obviously applying to readers. • Not always recognized that there is a major cultural boundary between adults and children. • To continually reconsider fundamentals.

8. The Role of the Reader • Literary theory acknowledges the importance of it. • Change in emphasis from single meaning and value to flexible text-and-author-based meaning and value • Roland Barthes’s concept of the death of the author, satirized by Malcolm Bradbury.

9. The Positive consequence of literary theory is that criticism has broadened to involve evidence about the reader, and to take in wide disciplines that children’s book world already represents. • No longer inferior or superior to others. School teachers and the academic are equal.

10. No difference in any significant way from adults’ responses, comparison made between individual children and adults. • Difference in the response at different developmental stages and different skill levels.

11. The central problem of the relationship between the adult and the child reflects the problem of power relationships within texts in general.

12. W-H Questions • If the reader is primary, then… What happens to values? What happens to accepted cannons? What happens to the culture? What happens to Taste? • After all, do we know… What is good?

13. Jane Austin V.S Judy Blume • Why is Jane Austin a better writer than Judy Blume? • Is her language more complex? • Is her characterization more extensive? • Or do more readers know about her?

14. The Canon becomes just another set of texts, linked by certain set of people. • Children’ Literature cannot escape from ideology. • Children’s Literature has to be defined in terms of “children” and “literature”.

15. Conclusion • Hunt’s suggestion of advocating a new critical approach called “childist’ criticism, as a parallel to “feminist” criticism.