IRSCL Award Winner 2001

Kinderliterarische Komparatistik
(Comparative Children's Literature)

by Emer O'Sullivan
Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 2000

Emer O'Sullivan's pioneering study examines the relevance of basic questions and concepts of comparative literature for children's literature studies and develops them further. What emerges is a map of the relevant areas:

      • general theory of children's literature,
      • contact and transfer studies (including translation and reception),
      • comparative poetics of children's literature (including thematology),
      • intertextuality studies,
      • image studies,
      • comparative genre studies,
      • comparative historiography of children's literature and
      • comparative history of children's literature studies.

The translation of children's literature is a special focus of the book. O'Sullivan draws on a communicative model of translation which links the theoretical fields of narratology and translation studies.

A final section addresses the concepts of world literature for children and children classics and analyses the globalisation of children's literature today