Barnboken – Journal of Children's Literature Research
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Escaping institutionality: rebellion and gendered space in Eric, or Little by Little and A Little Princess
No full textBy the convention of nineteenth-century school narratives, students are supposed to grow up in the school while their characters are being molded by the standardized educational system. Eric, or Little by Little and A Little Princess both resist the very idea of linear growth that is a trope of the Bildungsroman through endowing their protagonists with the rebelliousness and outsider status of the unruly child. This essay examines how Eric Williams and Sara Crewe, disobedient students who leave their schools after deriving no benefit from the institutional education, illuminate the ways in which institutionality is incorporated with the gendered agendas of nineteenth-century England. Eric and Sara both challenge the authority of the central adult in each tale by exploiting and changing the interior space of the schools; not only the inner structures of each school but also the connection/disconnection between school and home differ in the two stories. My proposition is that in the nineteenth-century school narratives discipline and character-building in the institution are not viewed as inevitable in reaching adulthood for girls, while for boys there is neither exit from the institutionality nor way to recover their lost home and childhood. Keywords: children’s literature; rebelliousness; institutionality; gender; school space; home space; nineteenth-century school narratives; linear growth; unrulines
Alice Curry, Environmental Crisis in Young Adult Fiction. A Poetics of Earth.
No full textReview of Alice Currys"Environmental Crisis in Young Adult Fiction. A Poetics of Earth
Yvonne Pålsson I Skinnstrumpas spår Svenska barn- och ungdomsböcker om indianer, 1860-2008
No full textReview/Recensio
Den orättvisaste orättvisan. Heroism och alternativ maskulinitet i Hans Erik Engqvists ungdomsroman Tredagarskriget
No full text”Wicked Wrongfulness. Heroism and Alternative Versions ofMasculinity in Hans Erik Engqvist’s Young Adult Novel Three Days War”. This article examines the re-evaluation of modern masculinity in the YA novel Three Days War by the Swedish author Hans Erik Engqvist (b. 1934). The central argument is that the fictional representation of Children Playing War in the novel is intertwined with the imagining of competing masculinities as well as opposing ideologies in post-war Sweden. Thus, the expression of institutionalized middle-class masculinity is contrasted to the representation of an alternative left wing working-class masculinity in opposition to social hierarchy and social inequality. Through different allusions to heroic men and heroic behaviour in 19th century literature and American Western films the novel invites the reader to evoke hegemonic masculinity as a schema shaping both the understanding of the young characters and their play. But the novel also interrogates this institutionalized myth of hegemonic masculinity and sets the main character, as well as the reader, in search of an alternative version of the heroic male.Keywords: Boy’s literature; intersectionality; hegemonic masculinity;working class masculinity; modernity; heroes; play; wa
Irregular Readers. Arthur Conan Doyle’s “six dirty scoundrels”, Boyhood and Literacy in Contemporary Sherlockian Children’s Literature
No full textYoung adult (YA) literature is a socialising genre that encourages young readers to take up particular ways of relating to historical or cultural materials. The first decade of the twenty-first century witnessed a boom in Sherlockian YA fiction using the Conan Doyle canon as a context and vocabulary for stories focused on the Baker Street Irregulars as figures of identification. This paper reads YA fiction’s deployment of Conan Doyle’s fictional universe as a strategy for negotiating anxieties of adolescent masculinity, particularly in relation to literacy and social agency.Keywords: Young adult literature; detective fiction; masculinity; literacy;adolescence; intertextualit
”En hobbit och ett mumintroll skulle kunna mötas i bästa sämja”: Receptionen av Bilbo, en hobbits äventyr (1962)
No full textAbstract: When the publisher Rabén & Sjögren published a new Swedish translation of The Hobbit (1962) in the wake of the success with The Lord of the Rings (1959–1961) with illustrations by Tove Jansson, it was a publication that seemed destined to become a modern classic. Yet, the publication was not reprinted and was replaced by other versions, lacking Jansson’s artwork. The general view have been that critics, readers and, in particular, Tolkien fans, were averse to the lack of detail and realism in Jansson’s work, and that it was deemed too close to her own Moominland creation. In this article, based on an examination of extant reviews, a more complex picture emerges, however. Reviewers, including “Tolkienists,” were generally favourable to Jansson’s illustrations. Instead the reason why the publisher chose discontinue using her artwork has to be sought elsewhere. The hypothesis ventured in this article, and backed up by evidence from the reviews, is that on the one hand the reading public (including the reviewers) were uncertain about what they were reading and how The Hobbit could and should be visualized. Jansson seemed a good idea at the time. But the 1960’s was also a period of transition where (Tolkienian) fantasy emerged as a publishing genre in its own right, bringing with it a realistic mode of representing the fantastic which jarred with the expressive and non-realistic artistry of Jansson. At that point, the publisher chose the developing visual practices that were to be associated with fantasy over the rich and expressive vision of Jansson. Ultimately, the article makes a plea for a reassessment of Jansson’s Bilbo-illustrations on the basis of the visual diversity evident in much present day fantasy. Keywords: J. R. R. Tolkien; The Hobbit; Swedish reception; fantasy;Tove Jansson; illustrations
Lekens alternativa geografi. Om Zacharias Topelius bidrag i Eos på 1850-talet
No full textAbstract: In the history of Nordic children’s literature the Swedish speaking Finnish author Zacharias Topelius (1818–1898) is not only recognized for developing a new form of realism but also for his fictional rascal, Walter. His eight stories about the mischievous Walter, “Walters Äfwentyr” (1855–1856), originally published in the Finnish magazine Eos, is thus considered to be the first children’s stories in Swedish that articulate the child as an unruly but good-hearted character. This essay, however, shows that the development of Topelian realism, and the emergence of the rascal and villain in the Nordic literature for children during the 1850s, is closely connected to the depiction of children’s play. In many of the stories published in Eos Topelius returns to the portrayal of young boys playing soldiers. In this way he positions the spirited fantasy of children in opposition to the adult world of order and seriousness. This alternative geography of play creates a space for the child’s perspective, and does it in a mode that resembles the realism of the forerunner Olof Fryxell (1806–1900). Topelius’ representation of play nevertheless seems to stand in opposition to the adult world in a more explicit way. It conveys the imaginings of unruly and playful boyhood masculinity as a means to achieve the seriousness of the adult middle-class male.Keywords: realism; masculinity; play; stories for boys; unruliness;romanticis
Teskedsgumman – en publikationshistoria på tre språk
No full textAbstract: The article, ”Mrs Pepperpot: a publication history in three languages,” is an attempt at providing a chronological and comprehensive overview of Alf Prøysen’s Mrs Pepperpot stories. The underlying argument is that only by looking at the publication history of the Mrs Pepperpot books in both Norway, Sweden and Great Britain is it possible to establish a complete corpus of the published stories. The overview shows that 56 stories were published between 1956 and 2010. It also shows a much greater degree of correspondence between the Swedish and English publications than with the Norwegian. Finally, a major discrepancy has to do with the varying degree of inclusion (and time of publication) of the 26 stories originally issued in the Swedish periodical Veckorevyn 1968–69. The article also charts the publication of Mrs Pepperpot stories in other media, such as periodicals, radio, and TV, and points to the media versatility of the Mrs Pepperpot stories as well as to Prøysen’s own improvisatory storytelling style and his willingness to recycle and remediate his stories.Keywords: Alf Prøysen; Mrs Pepperpot; periodicals; media; publicationhistory; textual criticis