Syftet med denna uppsats är att analysera hur genus uttrycks och skapas genom fyra populära barnböcker. Böckernas karaktärer analyseras från ett genusperspektiv. En central utgångspunkt är teorin om hur män och kvinnor hålls isär genom att tilldelas olika karaktärsdrag och hur denna uppdelning skapar genus. Uppsatsen analyserar även de fyra böckernas berättelseform, huruvida denna är uttryckt på ett maskulint eller feminint sätt. Risken med dessa stereotypa karaktärsdrag för män och kvinnor är att barnen kan bli påverkade av dem, vilket tvingar in dem i specifika genuspositioner. Detta kan hindra dem från att utveckla sina egna unika identiteter. Uppsatsens metod är en kvalitativ textanalys. Analyserna och resultaten visar att stereotypa genus uttrycks och återskapas genom böckernas olika karaktärer. Vissa karaktärer problematiserar dessa stereotypa genus genom att visa upp såväl feminina som maskulina drag. Min tes är att dessa uttryck av både maskulina och feminina drag är den ultimata problematiseringen av stereotypa genus. De fyra böckerna följer även en liknande berättelseform, där samtliga berättas på ett maskulint sätt genom att vara väldigt strukturerade och tydliga med delar som början, mitt och slut. / The aim of this paper is to analyze how gender is expressed and created through four popular fictive children's books. The characters in the books are analyzed from a gender perspective. A central point of departure is the theory about how males and females are separated by being given different characteristics and how this distinction creates gender. The paper also analyzes the narrative form of the different books, whether this form is expressed in a masculine or feminine matter. The risk with such stereotype characteristics for male and female characters is that children might be influenced by them, forcing them into certain gender positions, which might prevent them from forming their own unique identity. The method for the paper is a qualitative text analysis. The analyzes and results show that stereotype gender is expressed and reproduced through the different characters in the books. Some characters problematize these stereotype genders by showing both feminine as well as masculine characteristics. My thesis is that this expression of both masculine and feminine characteristics is the ultimate problematization of stereotype gender. The four books also contain similar narrative forms where they are all told in a masculine way by being very structured and explicit through parts such as beginning, middle and ending.

Spanning the period from the early years of the Cold War to the early twenty-first century, Crossing Out argues that medical theories of gender variance which emerge in the middle of the twentieth century are bound by the Cold-War–era discursive limits within which they were articulated, and that the ideological content of those theories persists into late-century research and treatment protocols. I parallel these analyses with interrogations of literary representations of transgendered subjects. What emerges most powerfully from this analysis of literary works is their tendency to signify in excess of the medical foreclosures, even when they seem consistent with medical discourse. By reading these two discursive systems against each other, the dissertation demonstrates the ability of literary discourse to accommodate multifaceted subject positions which medical discourse is unable to articulate. Literature thus complicates the stories that medical culture tells, revealing complex and multivariate possibilities for transgendered identification absent from traditional medical accounts. In tracing these discursive intersections the dissertation draws on and extends Michel Foucault’s theory of subjugated knowledges and Judith Butler’s writings on the formation of gendered subjects. Chapter One establishes the Cold War context, and argues that there are significant continuities between 1950s theories of intersexuality and Cold War ideology. Chapter Two extends this analysis to take in theories of transsexualism that emerged in the same years, and analyzes the discursive excesses of a 1950s pulp novel representation of a transsexual. Chapter Three establishes that the ideological content of the medical theories remained virtually unchanged by the 1990s, and argues that multivalent literary representations of transgenderism from the same decade promise the emergence of unanticipated forms of gender identity that exceed medical norms. Chapter Four is concerned with transgendered children, as they are represented in medical writing and in young adult and children’s literature. Interrogating fiction which negotiates between established medical discourse and an emergent transgender discourse, the chapter argues that these works at once invite and subvert a pathologizing understanding of gender-variant children while simultaneously providing data that demands to be read through the lens of an emergent affirmative notion of trans-childhood.

This thesis focuses on the way in which characters’ speech in the well-known American writer Katherine Paterson’s two novels for children, The Great Gilly Hopkins (1978) and The Same Stuff as Stars (2002), is translated by Romualda Zagorskienė and Renata Valotkienė, respectively in 1989 and 2005. The aim of this analysis is to consider and compare how Zagorskienė and Valotkienė deal with lexico-grammatical features that are hard to translate: grammatically deviant forms, colloquial forms, dialect and, especially, kinds of vocabulary that mark each character’s sociolect, such as the use of swearwords or name-calling. Further, the thesis looks at the effects of the strategies they choose on the presentation of characters and their relationships in the novels. The hypothesis that a number of lexico-grammatical features of characters’ speech will be standardized in translation has been raised, as this is suggested by current theoretical and practical research in translation studies. Thus, at first several relevant theoretical issues, based in particular on Gillian Lane-Mercier and Tiina Puurtinen’s theoretical research on the translation of tenor in fictional dialogues and literary sociolects, as well as what are known as the universals of translation are presented. In the thesis, the analysis of Zagorskienė and Valotkienė’s strategies is divided into two major parts. First, in Section 3, a detailed analysis of Zagorskienė and Valotkienė’s strategies for translating swearwords... [to full text] / Šiame darbe nagrinėjamos veikėjų kalbos vertimo strategijos įžymios amerikiečių rašytojos Ketrinos Paterson knygų vaikams „Smarkuolė Gilė Hopkins“ (The Great Gilly Hopkins, 1978 m.) ir „Kaip ir žvaigždės“ (The Same Stuff as Stars, 2002 m.) lietuviškuose vertimuose. „Smarkuolę Gilę Hopkins“ 1989 m. į lietuvių kalbą išvertė vertėja Romualda Zagorskienė, o „Kaip ir žvaigždes“ – 2005 m. vertėja Renata Valotkienė. Darbo tikslas – išanalizuoti R. Zagorskienės ir R. Valotkienės taikytas vertimo strategijas ir palyginti būdus, kuriais vertėjos perteikė leksines ir gramatines veikėjų kalbos ypatybes, pavyzdžiui, gramatiškai netaisyklingas žodžių formas, šnekamosios kalbos formas, dialektus ir ypač leksiką, kuri būdinga tam tikro veikėjo sociolektui (pavyzdžiui, keiksmažodžius, plūstamuosius žodžius ar epitetus). Be to, šiame tyrime nagrinėjamas vertėjų pasirinktų strategijų poveikis veikėjų ir jų tarpusavio santykių pavaizdavimui. Hipotezė, kad tam tikros leksinės ir gramatinės veikėjų kalbos ypatybės verčiant sunorminamos, keliama remiantis šiuolaikiniuose teoriniuose ir praktiniuose vertimo tyrimuose keliamomis prielaidomis. Todėl, pirmiausia aptariami atitinkami teoriniai klausimai, daugiausia – Gillian Lane-Mercier ir Tiinos Puurtinen teoretiniai vertimo tyrimai, kurių objektas – literatūrinių dialogų intonacijos, emocinių atspalvių (tenor) ir literatūrinių sociolektų vertimas. Aptariamos ir vadinamosios universaliosios vertimo strategijos (translation universals). Nagrinėjant R... [toliau žr. visą tekstą]

This thesis is contained within the frame of a plot diagram, since it is a story about telling stories about stories. The conflict was initiated when it struck me that I had been living unawares inside a contradiction: I called myself a feminist, yet I loved and promoted the "Great Works of Western Literature", a canon reflecting patriarchal metanarratives. This conflict shaped the question, "What does it mean to say that we are gendered by what and how we read as girls?" I looked for clues by re-searching my graduate coursework, amongst the discourses of critical pedagogy, postmodernism, interpretive inquiry, and feminist literary criticism. Translating theory into rising action, I adopted as my approach the memory-work techniques described in Female Sexualization (1987), an exemplary work of feminist research. I formed the BookMarks Collective, comprising an affinity group of six women, including me, who met and responded to the question for five months by writing, critiquing, and rewriting memory-stories about their girlhood reading. The experience of collectivity itself became the story's climax: together we opened the door to a world we would not have discovered alone or lived theoretically. Together we brought to life the belief that change in ourselves preceeds pedagogic change, our conversations having sparked insights about our beliefs and practice that none had come to on her own. Together, we re-read "gendering" as a process within a complex and contradictory constructed reality in which we both act and are acted upon. Together, we recognized the power of collective consciousness-raising to enable us to re-view the textual meanings of our lifestories, allowing us to become conscious agents in their ongoing construction. / viii, 232 leaves ; 29 cm.

Exploring Urban Spaces in the Young Imagination makes the case for taking seriously children's and young adult fiction as a topic worthy of scholarly analysis beyond a purely didactic focus. The recent explosion of interest in this literature among adult readers and the blurring of boundaries between adult and youth media demonstrate that it has become a powerful influence on popular culture and has captured the collective imagination. As the future inhabitants of urban spaces, paying close attention to children’s and youth perspectives can provide fresh lenses, with which to view the cultural construction of cityscapes. This dissertation examines post-millennium children’s and YA fiction and film. Drawing on theories of the spatial turn, my research provides five case studies on a variety of topics related to the contemporary metropolis – ranging from cognitive disability to environmental concerns. Specifically, it pays close attention to the inherent connections between the developing perceptions of metropolises and the various protagonists’ processes of identity formation. Beginning with Berlin, as portrayed in Andreas Steinhöfel’s popular Rico-und-Oskar-trilogy, my analysis explores the protagonist’s shifting perceptions of his urban surroundings while overcoming the limitations of his learning disability. Furthermore, my research shows how Steinhöfel’s Der mechanische Prinz utilizes the cityscape as a mirror for the protagonist’s psyche and how his knowledge of the Berlin subway system contributes to his self-healing. In contrast, China Miéville’s Un Lun Dun explores the ecocritical implications of London’s urban ‘other’, UnLondon. Katherine Marsh’s The Night Tourist and its sequel The Twilight Tourist illustrate the literary construction of New York City as a ‘mediascape’ and modern myth. Finally, I focus on alternative family structures and their connection to urban spaces, specifically Venice in Cornelia Funke’s Herr der Diebe, and Paris in Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret. The study concludes with an examination of these novels’ filmic versions and their respective romanticisations of Venice and Paris. The dissertation contributes to the fields of child and youth studies and urban geographies by exposing the manifold symbiotic constructions of cityscapes and youth in post-2000 children’s and YA fiction that shape identities and spaces alike. / Thesis (Ph.D, German) -- Queen's University, 2012-09-02 16:56:36.507

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While the theatrical works of Jules Verne have gathered some critical attention over recent years, the text of the Voyage à travers l’Impossible has remained an obscure space in the author’s oeuvre or deemed unworthy by Vernian scholars. Jules Verne has predominantly been seen as a writer of adventure novels whereas the fantastic elements in his work have commonly been overlooked by critics. This thesis examines the ways in which the Voyage à travers l’Impossible amalgamates ideas that are representative not only of the Vernian work in general but also of the pre-freudian spirit of the nineteenth century. By viewing the play within the context of theatrical fantasy, this thesis opens up new paths of analysis in the genre. Part of this endeavour consists of a comparison with a seemingly disparate text: Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, which, similarly to Verne’s play, facilitates an exploration of the function of fantasy both in literary and theatrical terms as it was first adapted for the stage in 2003. During the course of this thesis I offer an analysis of the trilogy and proceed to cover new ground by comparing this to an analysis of the adapted text. For the purpose of my examination I establish a connection between the two texts by regarding the Voyage à travers l’Impossible and His Dark Materials as dominated by the literary motif of initiation according to the model introduced by Vernian specialist Simone Vierne. I subsequently interweave an array of theories on fantasy, psychoanalysis, topography and the body as part of my analysis of the literary fantastic. Texts by Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Tzvetan Todorov, Irène Bessière, Mircea Eliade, Judith Butler and Vernian critics such as William Butcher are amply used in my readings of Verne and Pullman before I proceed to examine their relevance to the theatrical experience of the fantastic. An analysis of the adaptation of His Dark Materials offers the opportunity for fresh critical insights by creating new perspectives on the function of fantasy in its fluctuation from page to stage and vice-versa. It is through these different perspectives that I revisit old questions and introduce new ones such as the difference between fantasy and the fantastic, their regressive or progressive character, the modification of ii fantastic elements on the passage from the literary to the theatrical and from pre-modernism to post-modernism. Basing my analysis on stories of initiation, I suggest that fantasy evades exclusive association with either progress or regress and only remains faithful to the notions of passage and blurring of frontiers.

This dissertation discusses the implied reader in the EnCuento series illustrated childrens stories. All the stories are written by well-known Hispanic authors. This work elucidates historical, cultural, and semiotic gaps in the reading process. It explores the ways in which textual elements- such as style, focalization, and manipulation of readers expectations - affect the implied readers ability to produce or extract meaning. Our study will add to knowledge of the function of the implied reader in childrens texts. This study is divided into four chapters, each focusing on the implied reader. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the series discussing three books that are easy to understand, with simple vocabulary, chronological plots, and strong protagonists. Chapter 2 explores irony in two horror stories; Chapter 3 discusses books that promote a particular ideology. Finally, Chapter 4 explores books with protagonists who are outsiders. The books within each chapter have enough in common in terms of decodability that they seem to pursue the same kind of implied reader. Each chapter illustrates the way that style, point of view, manipulation of readers expectations, and telltale gaps affect the implied readers ability to make meaning. Within the series, each contributing author creates a system through which the reader can participate in the story. The authors intent is to communicate meaning to the implied reader. In sum, interpreting texts is communication between author and reader. In all of the EnCuento texts, authors employ response- inviting structures, making them interpretable on many levels. This study further analyzes EnCuento stories the better to decide if their primary purpose is didactic. Because of the political content of texts written for adults- as in the case of the stories written by Benedetti, Paz, and Valenzuela - I expected them to communicate a clear political message to their child readers. The thesis also inquires into whether books are, in fact written for children and children exclusively. Because the EnCuento authors are accomplished writers of adult literature, this study analyzes the degree to which the authors communicate specifically with a child audience. Finally, the dissertation analyzes the illustrations in several of the texts and finds that book illustrations are essential to making connections with the reader. It also explores cultural references to decide if they are specific to Latin America.