För att bli kvinna - och av lust : en studie i tonårsflickors läsning

• As part of the development of the teaching of literature in school, it is also important to reflect upon what pupils read outside school. This thesis deals with the spare time reading of twenty 15-16-year-old girls which has been examined during a two-year period. Empirical material related to young girls’ reading is examined in a variety of scholarly methods. Young girls’ reading is studied in the light of reception theory; novels are analysed by means of narratology; young girls’ lives are charted from perspectives drawn from cultural sociology and social psychology; finally, all aspects of the empirical material are tested by means of theories derived from gender studies. For the purposes of the thesis the initial question has been broken down into three segments: To what extent the girls actually engage in reading in their spare time, what they read, and what importance they attach to their reading. Another aim, which focusses attention on the connection between the girls’ lives and their reading, has been to find out to what extent the girls’ choice of literature is determined by geographical, social, cultural, and religious factors and by the teaching of literature at school. The third aim has been to find out how gender is constructed in the books that the girls choose to read, how they construct gender while reading these books, and how they construct gender in their own lives. The results of the study suggest that pleasure is a strong factor governing the girls’ reading and that there is a strong connection between the girls’ construction of their identity, including the formation of gender, and their choice of literature and the development of their reading. The study shows that the fiction chosen by the girls themselves mirrors their lives and that the social, cultural and religious factors have an influence on their reading. The relevance of the results of the thesis to the teaching of literature in Swedish schools is discussed. A dialogue is initiated with Läroplanens värdegrund, Lpo 94 and with Kursplan 2000, the Swedish syllabus currently used.

Ämnesord

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

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

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

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- General Literary Studies (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

literature criticism

Key words: girl’s reading

gender

reading culture

spare time

reception theory

transactional reading

teaching literature

literary canon

General and comparative literature

Swedish syllabus.

Allmän och jämförande litteratur

litteraturkritik

literary theory

litteraturteori

Literature

HUMANITIES and RELIGION

Publikations- och innehållstyp

dok (ämneskategori)

vet (ämneskategori)