Tema: Estetik och pedagogik : Theme: Aesthetics and Pedagogy

• Aesthetics and Pedagogy in Nordic Children’s and Young Adult Literature – A Relationship in Transformation? ”All pedagogic art is bad art – and all good art is pedagogic” is one of Lennart Hellsing’s most cited statements about children’s literature (Tankar om barnlitteraturen, 1963). The phrasing is accurate and elegant, but the question is whether it is entirely fair to the specific terms of children’s literature? Children’s literature is often described in the form of opposite pairs such as literary and didactic, entertaining and educational, imaginative and instructing, existential and political (Weinreich, Children’s Literature – Art or Pedagogy, 2000). While these descriptions in many cases are justified, they risk making invisible the basic connection between aesthetics and pedagogy that characterises children’s literature. In recent years, research has attempted to bridge what is referred to as “the aesthetic-pedagogical divide” by considering the didactic orientation of children’s literature a part of its aesthetics (Beauvais, ”What's in ’the gap?’”, 2015; Nikolajeva, Barnbokens byggklossar, 2017). Theoretically innovative approaches on the field are especially prominent within research on the radical and political history of children’s literature (Reynolds, Radical Children's Literature, 2007; Mickenberg, Learning from the Left, 2005). The conflict between aesthetics and pedagogy permeates the history of children’s literature at least since the Romantic era (Kümmerling-Meibauer, ”Images of Childhood in Romantic Children’s Literature”, 2008). At this point a new view of literature, one which affirms imagination and emotion, takes hold at the same time as the more instructing children’s literature of the Enlightenment is criticized. Aesthetics and pedagogy are also polarized in the discussions of the role and function of contemporary children’s literature – they are set against each other and considered mutually exclusive. The polarity is particularly noticeable in the debates on children’s literature that flare up from time to time, where actors with pedagogical, political, and educational interests polemicize against defenders of the artistic autonomy of children’s culture. This theme in Barnboken: Journal of Children’s Literature Research wishes to stimulate research that aims to reconsider the relationship between aesthetics and pedagogy. We therefore welcome articles that examine the connections between aesthetics and pedagogy in Nordic children’s and young adult literature, as well as children’s culture in a broader sense, from different perspectives.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature (hsv//eng)

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

ovr (ämneskategori)