This dissertation uses a feminist cultural materialist approach that draws on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Luce Irigaray to examine the neglected genre of postwar-Cold War American teen girl romance novels, which I call female junior novels. Written between 1942 and the late 1960s by authors such as Betty Cavanna, Maureen Daly, Anne Emery, Rosamond du Jardin, and Mary Stolz, these texts create a kind of hieroglyphic world, where possession of the right dress or the proper seat in the malt shop determines a girls place within an entrenched adolescent social hierarchy. Thus in the first chapter, I argue that girls adherence to consumer-based social codes ultimately constructs a semi-autonomous female society, still under the umbrella of patriarchy, but based on female desire and possessing its own logic. This adolescent female society parallels the network of women who produced (authors, illustrators, editors) and distributed (librarians, critics) these texts to teenaged girls. Invisible because of its all-female composition, middlebrow status, and feminine control, yet self-governing for the same reasons, the network established a semi-autonomous space into which left-leaning authors could safely (if subtly) critique American social and foreign policies during the Cold War. Chapter Two examines the first generation of the network, including Anne Carroll Moore, Bertha Mahony, Louise Seaman, and May Massee, who helped to create the childrens publishing industry in America, while Chapter Three investigates the second generation, including Mabel Williams, Margaret Scoggin, and Ursula Nordstrom, who entrenched childrens and adolescent literature in publishing houses and library services. In Chapter Four I explore the shifting concept of what constitutes quality within these texts, with an emphasis on the role of authors, illustrators, and critics in defining such value. Chapter Five investigates the use of female junior novels within the classroom, paying particular attention to the role of bibliotherapy, in which these texts were used to help teenagers solve their developmental tasks, as suggested by psychologist Robert J. Havighurst. A brief conclusion discusses the fall of the female junior novels and their network, while a coda addresses the republication of these texts today through the nostalgia press.

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This research presents a synchronic and a diachronic investigation of six Italian translations of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Alice) across a century (1872-1988). This work draws on Antoine Berman's method for the analysis of literary translations and integrates it with interdisciplinary theoretical approaches focused on the investigation of children's literature in translation. The premises of children's literature studies, translation studies, and retranslation studies underpin the analytical framework that supports the textual analysis. The examination focuses in particular on the translation strategies used to convey in Italian the culture-specific references that contribute to fashion the identity of Alice and her Wonderland. The research operates on two different levels. Firstly, it presents a synchronic investigation concerned with a close reading and analysis of each translation in linguistic and textual terms. The elements examined in the detailed survey offer the opportunity to retrace the translators' unique understanding of Alice and discuss how it was conveyed to the Italian readers. Secondly, it proposes a diachronic investigation comparing, from a chronological perspective, the translation solutions previously identified and examines how the concepts of the image of the child and dual readership have evolved in the Italian translations. The purpose of the study is to investigate the translation strategies to convey Alice in Italian, observe the patterns that emerge from the analysis of the texts and advance explanatory hypotheses that would account for the changes in the translators' understanding of Carroll's novel over time. The close reading the research centres on aims to provide a meticulous collection of the translation solutions found in the texts; these are not confined to particular passages of the book but are found throughout it, thus offering support for future analysis on the translations of Alice. Finally, this research also aims to contribute to the analysis of children's literature in translation by providing an analytical framework able to support the investigation of different aspects of books for children in translation in other languages other than Italian.

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