The compulsion to repeat : introduction to seriality and texts for young people

  • There is a curious gap in the scholarship on texts for young people: while series fiction has been an important stream of publishing for children and adolescents at least since the last decades of the nineteenth century, the scholarship on these texts has not been central to the development of theories on and criticism of texts for young people. The focus of scholarship is much more likely to be on stand-alone, high-quality texts of literary fiction. Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows (1908), for example, has occupied critics in the field far more often and more significantly than all of the 46 popular novels about schoolgirls with similar plots that were published by Grahame’s contemporary, Angela Brazil (beginning in 1904 with A Terrible Tomboy). Literary fiction such as Grahame’s tends to be defined in terms of its singularity – the unique voice of the narrator, unusual resolutions to narrative dilemmas, intricate formal designs, and complicated themes – often specifically as distinct from the formulaic patterns of series fiction. Yet, curiously, scholars typically use examples from literary fiction to illustrate the common characteristics of books directed to young readers: it was Grahame’s book, and not Brazil’s books, that appeared in the Children’s Literature Association’s list Touchstones as one of the "distinguished children’s books" the study of which "will allow us to better understand children’s literature in general," according to Perry Nodelman, who chaired the committee that produced the list. (Nodelman 1985, p. 2) ...

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Metadaten
Author:Mavis Reimer, Deanna England, Melanie Dennis Unrau, Nyala Ali
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-459696
ISSN:2568-4477
Parent Title (German):Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Kinder- und Jugendliteraturforschung : GKJF
Publisher:Gesellschaft für Kinder- und Jugendliteraturforschung
Place of publication:Frankfurt am Main
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Year of Completion:2017
Year of first Publication:2017
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2018/05/08
Volume:2017
Page Number:27
First Page:9
Last Page:35
HeBIS-PPN:432231579
Institutes:Neuere Philologien / Neuere Philologien
Dewey Decimal Classification:0 Informatik, Informationswissenschaft, allgemeine Werke / 02 Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaften / 020 Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaften
3 Sozialwissenschaften / 37 Bildung und Erziehung / 370 Bildung und Erziehung
8 Literatur / 80 Literatur, Rhetorik, Literaturwissenschaft / 800 Literatur und Rhetorik
8 Literatur / 83 Deutsche und verwandte Literaturen / 830 Literaturen germanischer Sprachen; Deutsche Literatur
Sammlungen:Universitätspublikationen
Germanistik / GiNDok
Licence (German):License LogoDeutsches Urheberrecht