TY - CHAP

T1 - Sameness and Difference in Children's Literature

T2 - An Introduction

AU - O'Sullivan, Emer

AU - Immel, Andrea

PY - 2017

Y1 - 2017

N2 - In this introductory chapter to a volume of essays which investigate cultural sameness and difference for children in a variety of forms and genres in texts from Denmark, Germany, France, Russia, Britain, and the United States from the last two hundred years, O’Sullivan and Immel use Peter Sís’s multi-layered, transnational picturebook Madlenka (2000), about how a young girl playfully negotiates the world within her block, as a template to address the overriding questions and central theoretical issues of the volume. These are: identity and belonging; sameness and difference; representation, perspective and agency (who is seeing, what (or who) is seen, how are they represented, and (potentially) why are they represented in this way?); audience; and media, form and genre. The essays are referenced in each part of the theoretical discussion, creating links and connections accross materials, cultures and epochs in a chapter which provides a wide context and a discerning way to look at diversity and national identity tropes in children’s literature today.

AB - In this introductory chapter to a volume of essays which investigate cultural sameness and difference for children in a variety of forms and genres in texts from Denmark, Germany, France, Russia, Britain, and the United States from the last two hundred years, O’Sullivan and Immel use Peter Sís’s multi-layered, transnational picturebook Madlenka (2000), about how a young girl playfully negotiates the world within her block, as a template to address the overriding questions and central theoretical issues of the volume. These are: identity and belonging; sameness and difference; representation, perspective and agency (who is seeing, what (or who) is seen, how are they represented, and (potentially) why are they represented in this way?); audience; and media, form and genre. The essays are referenced in each part of the theoretical discussion, creating links and connections accross materials, cultures and epochs in a chapter which provides a wide context and a discerning way to look at diversity and national identity tropes in children’s literature today.

KW - Literature studies

KW - Identity

KW - difference

KW - perspective

KW - agency

KW - genre

KW - imagology

KW - cosmopolitanism

KW - children's literature

KW - Peter Sís

KW - English

U2 - 10.1057/978-1-137-46169-8_1

DO - 10.1057/978-1-137-46169-8_1

M3 - Contributions to collected editions/anthologies

SN - 978-1-137-46168-1

T3 - Critical Approaches to Children's Literature

SP - 1

EP - 25

BT - Imagining Sameness and Difference in Children's Literature

A2 - O'Sullivan, Emer

A2 - Immel, Andrea

PB - Palgrave Macmillan

CY - London, New York

ER -