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
Criticism and Children’s Literature
Critical Theory Concerning itself with everything in and
Children’s Literature is commonly judged in terms of their use.
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.
After all, do we know… What is good?
Jane Austin V.S Judy iterature Association of America has published a suggested canon of Children’s Literature : Touchstones.
Children’ Literature is available to criticism as well as to amateur.
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
To continually reconsider fundamentals.
The Role of the Reader
Literary theory acknowledges the importance of it.
Change in emphasis from single meaning and value to flexible text-andauthor-based meaning and value
Difference in the response at different developmental stages and different skill levels.
The central problem of the relationship between the adult and the child reflects the problem of power relationships within texts in general.
No longer inferior or superior to others. School teachers and the academic are equal.
No difference in any significant way from adults’ responses, comparison made between individual children and adults.
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
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.
Roland Barthes’s concept of the death of the author, satirized by Malcolm Bradbury.
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.
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?
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.