Language and theme in children's literature

Diplomarbeit aus dem Jahr 2002 im Fachbereich Amerikanistik - Literatur Universität Wien Sprache: Deutsch Abstract: I have never stopped loving children's literature and I have been interested in it as a field of research ever since I took a course on the history of children's literature at the University of Toronto. When I started out on this paper I had little idea what it would be about only that the focus would be on language. I knew I was fascinated by the subject so I started exploring the issue in general terms reading more or less randomly about children's literature and reading children's literature before I decided on the structure of the paper and the texts I would use for it. My fascination for children's literature is grounded in its potential for change and for development which is one of its major aspects. The fierce attempts to control children's readings adults' prescriptions of what is good for them and what is not have to do with this aspect of children's literature which has always been considered dangerous by some adults because there is nothing more powerful than the potency of the literary imagination. Fairy tales which were viewed as suspicious for a long time as the history of children's literature shows are a good example of this perceived threat. The question of what children should read how much freedom they should have to choose which ultimately comes down to the question if they should be allowed to have an imagination or not has had to do with changing notions of childhood on which the emergence of imaginative literature for children depended but to which it has contributed a lot in turn. The question really is if children's natural liveliness curiosity and open-mindedness should be suppressed if children should be frightened and kept in their place taught to accept everything unquestioningly or be offered what they need to develop and grow at their own pace and develop into critical self-confident open-min