Thesis (M.A. (English)) - Rhodes University, 2008.

Research Doctorate - PhD English / This thesis challenges the idea that children’s literature is an inherently colonising act. By applying Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories of dialogism and the carnivalesque to the nonsense literature of Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll, I show that children’s texts can be read as non-colonising. A dialogic reading of Edward Lear’s limericks and Lewis Carroll’s Alice books shows that these texts are non-colonising and emancipatory because they do not promote one worldview or impose a concept of the essentialised child onto the reader. Instead, they challenge the arbitrary boundaries established and maintained by tools such as language and threats of social judgement that support imperial dichotomies of self and other. I also show how the discourse surrounding children’s literature perpetuates a “politics of innocence” concerning a dominant social concept of the child. This discourse encourages purposive adaptations of children’s books, in this case, Lear’s and Carroll’s nonsense texts, that are more colonising than the original texts.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T19:58:56Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Fernanda Marques Granato.pdf: 1246024 bytes, checksum: a72edaae43263f88c7f64c66a141f42e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-10-06 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This dissertation has as its aim to retrieve the concept of the nonsense genre with the purpose of testing the hypothesis of a possible dialogue between texts from two literary works of different characteristics and of different times: Viagem numa peneira, by Edward Lear (1846), and Quatro-olhos, by Renato Pompeu (1976). The studies carried out were able to ascertain that, among the analyzed texts, there are traces that make possible not only to bring the two closer together, but also to do a reinterpretation of the nonsense genre in the context of the literary contemporaneity. In order to develop this proposal, we have elected a few authors that give support to the analysis of the fictional works, such as: Aristotle (2011) and Croce (1995), on genre; Sewell (1952), Stewart (1978), Ede (1987) and Tigges (1988), on nonsense; Huizinga (2010), on game; Watt (2010) and Lukács (2009) on novel; Nikolayeva (2011), on illustration; Pignatari (2011) and Huxley (1948), on poetry; and Agamben (2009), on the contemporaneity. Departing from a historic conceptual recover, our attention is drawn to the perspective of confirmation of the hypothesis about the nonsense literary genre, its connection to the Victorian ages and the reverberations that the referred genre has brought to our contemporaneity, and specially to the novel by Renato Pompeu, leaving as credit the tendency for the fragmentation of the narrative / Esta pesquisa tem por objetivo resgatar o conceito do gênero nonsense com a finalidade de testar a hipótese de um possível diálogo entre textos de duas obras de características e épocas distintas: Viagem numa peneira, de Edward Lear (1846) e Quatro-olhos, de Renato Pompeu (1976). Os estudos realizados permitem comprovar que, entre os textos analisados, existem traços que possibilitam não apenas aproximá-los, mas também realizar uma reinterpretação do gênero nonsense no contexto da contemporaneidade literária. Para o desenvolvimento do trabalho, elegemos alguns teóricos que dão suporte à análise das obras ficcionais, são eles: Aristóteles (2011) e Croce (1995), sobre gênero; Sewell (1952), Stewart (1978), Ede (1987) e Tigges (1988), sobre nonsense; Huizinga (2010), sobre o lúdico e o jogo; Watt (2010) e Lukács (2009), sobre a teoria do romance; Nikolayeva (2011), sobre a ilustração; Pignatari (2011) e Huxley (1948), sobre a poesia; e Agamben (2009), sobre o contemporâneo. A partir de uma retomada histórico-conceitual, nossa atenção volta-se para a perspectiva de comprovação da hipótese sobre o gênero nonsense, sua ligação com a era vitoriana e as reverberações que o referido gênero traz para a nossa contemporaneidade e, em especial, para o romance de Renato Pompeu, deixando como saldo a tendência para a fragmentação narrativa