Barnboken – Journal of Children's Literature Research
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Mobile characters, mobile texts: homelessness and intertextuality in contemporary texts for young people
No full textSince the 1990s, narratives about homelessness for and about young people have proliferated around the world. A cluster of thematic elements shared by many of these narratives of the age of globalization points to the deep anxiety that is being expressed about a social, economic, and cultural system under stress or struggling to find a new formation. More surprisingly, many of the narratives also use canonical cultural texts extensively as intertexts. This article considers three novels from three different national traditions to address the work of intertextuality in narratives about homelessness: Skellig by UK author David Almond, which was published in 1998; Chronicler of the Winds by Swedish author Henning Mankell, which was first published in 1988 in Swedish as Comédia Infantil and published in an English translation in 2006; and Stained Glass by Canadian author Michael Bedard, which was published in 2002. Using Julia Kristeva’s definition of intertextuality as the ‘‘transposition of one (or several) sign systems into another,’’ I propose that all intertexts can be thought of as metaphoric texts, in the precise sense that they carry one text into another. In the narratives under discussion in this article, the idea of homelessness is in perpetual motion between texts and intertexts, ground and figure, the literal and the symbolic. What the child characters and the readers who take up the position offered to implied readers are asked to do, I argue, is to put on a way of seeing that does not settle, a way of being that strains forward toward the new.Keywords: homelessness; metaphor; young people’s narratives; intertextuality; transposition; globalization; Julia Kristeva; street kids; uncanny; home(Published: 19 June 2013)Barnboken tidskrift för barnlitteraturforskning/Journal of Children’s Literature Research, Vol. 36, 2013 http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/clr.v36i0.2158
‘‘No place like home’’: the facts and figures of homelessness in contemporary texts for young people
No full textThe most common story for children is one in which a central character leaves home in search of an adventure or is pushed out of an originary home, journeys to an unfamiliar place, and, after a series of exciting and/or dangerous experiences, either returns home, or chooses to claim the unfamiliar space as a new home. Whether as historical novel, domestic fiction, or fantasy, this story finds its happy ending in the agreement of the child to be secure (and secured) inside. The turn of the millennium, however, has seen an increasing number of narratives for young readers that challenge the earlier pattern. Using three Canadian novels for young people (published in 2004, 2006, and 2007) as examples, I demonstrate that, while these narratives may locate themselves within the context of a social-justice pedagogy and are concerned to teach young people thefacts of homelessness and to promote thoughtful reflections on the underlying social causes of which homelessness is the symptom, readers are also invited to understand the young characters in the text more abstractly, as figures that represent possible ways of being in the world. Indeed, many of the recent narratives for young people replicate, almost uncannily, the metaphors and rhetorical turns of the theorists of globalization.Keywords: children's literature; street kids; globalization; mobility; figuration; Canadian literature; award-winnersNote: This article is being published simultaneously in Nordic ChildLit Aesthetics/Barnelitterært forskningstidsskrift and Barnboken – tidskrift för barnlitteraturforskning/Journal of Children’s Literature Research
Keywords for Children’s Literature: mapping the critical moment
No full textNote: This article is being published simultaneously in Nordic ChildLit Aesthetics/Barnelitterært forskningstidsskrift and Barnboken – tidskrift för barnlitteraturforskning/Journal of Children’s Literature Research
Christensen, Nina: Videbegær. Oplysning, børnelitteratur, dannelse
No full textReview/recensionPublished: 22 May 201
Nordisk barnelitteratur ̶ et nytt kunstforskningsspørsmål?
No full textNote: This article is being published simultaneously in Nordic ChildLit Aesthetics/Barnelitterært forskningstidsskrift and Barnboken – tidskrift för barnlitteraturforskning/Journal of Children’s Literature Research
Pugh, Tison: Innocence, Heterosexuality, and the Queerness of Children’s Literature
No full textReview/recension Published: 2 May 201
Carroll, Jane Suzanne: Landscape in Children’s Literature
No full textReview/recensionPublished: 14 June 201
Paulin, Lotta: Den didaktiska fiktionen. Konstruktion av förebilder ur ett barn- och ungdomslitterärt perspektiv 1400-1750
No full textReview/recensionPublished: 7 May 201
Animals and the unspoken: intertwined lives in Martha Sandwall-Bergström’s Kulla-Gulla series
No full textThis article discusses aspects of the human-animal relationships in Martha Sandwall-Bergström’s Kulla-Gulla series, using a theoretical framework consisting of ecofeminism and literary animal studies. Ecofeminist scholars demonstrate how the problematic of gender and nature are linked, and this article focuses on how Gulla’s relationship with some significant animals enables her to envision a social ideal that undermines the patriarchal power structures that are dominant in her society. The worldview that emerges resists anthropocentric normativity by suggesting a more inclusive, biocentric utopia where the boundaries between nature, humans and non-human animals become fluid. Reading the Kulla-Gulla books from a perspective that is attentive to the presence of animals reveals the extent of the interconnectedness of the human and non-human spheres of life. The narrative attributes agency to a number of animals, which allows them to become a vital part of the social fabric of the novels. Without being reduced to metaphorical devices, they speak up and their voices are heard by some of the human characters. Their status as agents allows them to mediate social changes in a society that is not presented as exclusively human. In the literary universe of Kulla-Gulla, where social hierarchies and gender patterns appear to be firmly established, some characters, both animal and human, are able to destabilize and subvert these patterns with their border-crossing qualities. Their voices and actions express what the human characters are not able to, and by doing so, they undermine strict humanist dualisms.Keywords: Martha Sandwall-Bergström; ecofeminism; literary animal studies(Published: 11 December 2013) Citation: Barnboken tidskrift för barnlitteraturforskning/Journal of Children’s Literature Research, Vol. 36, 2013 http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/clr.v36i0.2336
Att skilja äkta kärlek från falsk. Manliga och omanliga kroppar i Martha Sandwall-Bergströms Kulla-Gullaserie
No full text‘‘To distinguish true from false love: Manly and unmanly bodies in Martha Sandwall-Bergström’s Kulla-Gulla series.’’ The protagonist Gulla in Martha Sandwall-Bergström’s (1913-2000) Kulla-Gulla series (1945-51) encounters ’’true’’ and ’’false’’ love through two men, Tomas Tomasson and Ivan Malma. The hypothesis of this article is that true love is placed in a manly body and false love in an unmanly body. Tomas’ and Ivan’s manliness and unmanliness are constructed through characteristics which are marked by different power categories, such as gender, age, class, ‘‘race’’ and functionality. Therefore an intersectional perspective is used. I find that Tomas and Ivan have similar social positions except for their different classes. Tomas’ body is portrayed as manly, mobile and warm, whereas Ivan’s body is characterized as unmanly, immobile and cold. Tomas evokes love in Gulla, whereas Ivan arouses lust as well as ambivalence. Tomas’ manly body functions as a signal for true love and guides the reader as well as Gulla in distinguishing his true from Ivan’s false love. When Gulla chooses Tomas, she is defined as an adult.Keywords: Martha Sandwall-Bergström; girls’ books; love; masculinity; intersectionality(Published: 11 December 2013)Citation: Barnboken tidskrift för barnlitteraturforskning/Journal of Children’s Literature Research, Vol. 36, 2013 http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/clr.v36i0.2334