2004 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Sexuality in Children's Literature From a Post-Modemism Viewpoint
| Project/Area Number |
15520161
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
ヨーロッパ語系文学
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| Research Institution | Hitotsubashi University |
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Principal Investigator |
MIURA Reiichi Hitotsubashi University, Graduate School of Language and Culture, Associate Professor, 大学院・言語社会研究科, 助教授 (70262920)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
KAWABATA Ariko Aichi Prefectural University, Faculty of Foreign Studies, Department of British and American Studies, Associate Professor, 外国語学部, 助教授 (80224830)
TODAYAMA Midori Hachinohe National College of Technology, Department of Liberal Arts and Engineering Sciences, Associate Professor, 総合科学科, 助教授 (40342448)
WATANABE Miki Nagoya University, Graduate of Languages and Cultures, Associate Professor, 大学院・国際言語文化研究科, 助教授 (90201235)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2003 – 2004
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| Keywords | Children's Literature / Sexuality / Feminisms / Gender / Postmodernism |
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| Research Abstract |
Todayama's study on the receptional history of Little Black Sambo in Japan has shown that in children's literature, the idea of being "literary valuable" has always been deeply interrelated with that of being pedagogically "good."
Watanabe then, in relation of Todayama's view, argues that children's literature generically needs not to emphasize the importance of originality, or being independent of the past convention. Furthermore, good children's literature more often than not positively manifests its being inheritor of the past rich convention in terms of forms and standards.
Literary theories have already criticized, with much controversy, the political implications of (apparently non-political) "aesthetic values" and the fictionality of the idea of "originality." This study chose to study "children's literature" as the site where those recent criticisms are more clearly and radically interrogated.
As Peter Burger argues, the concept of original aesthetic value of artworks is constructed when in the beginning of the twentieth century, high modernism tried to make novels "high art." On the other hand, it is demonstrated in new-historical gender studies, like Elaine Showalter's, that the institutionalization of high modernism results in rendering literature "expression," which is always more or less "sexual" ex-pression, and that above all, the aesthetic of literature is fundamentally a formation of gender configuration.
Kawabata and Miura indicate that children's literature is never free form sexuality, seen from the post-queer viewpoint that recognizes the expanded idea of sexuality, that children's literature is also a formation of gender/sexuality dynamics and that when children's literature positively complicates with the standardized, conventional discipline of sexuality, it cannot help ironically revealing the truth of subversive gender/sexuality dynamics.
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Research Products
(25 results)
