| Innocence and Experience: Publisher: Nashr-e Markaz Publishing Company. Published 2003 (in Persian) Can the philosophy (theory) of Children's Literature exist as a discipline independent of the philosophy (theory) of Literature? One major condition for giving a positive answer to this inquiry is to be able to show that Children's Literature differs from that of adults in its “objectives” and “methods." Conventionally, Children's Literature in Iran has been dealt with in comparison with the philosophy (theory) of Literature. Therefore, many critics of Children's Literature have adopted their approach from the existing literary schools such as structuralism, psychoanalysis, and feminism. However, deductive studies do not seem to offer anything new about the phenomenon under investigation, but may at best apply previous findings to new cases. Literariness appears to be a new side of the adult-centrism that has substituted ideologyism and didacticism in the theory and criticism of Children's Literature. The most debatable issue in the theories of Children's Literature is, therefore, a matter of methodology. Hence, answering the question of whether the philosophy (theory) of Children's Literature -or Children's Literature- can exist independent of the philosophy (theory) of adults' Literature would be possible only through inductive methods. Such methods of inquiry employed in qualitative research can lead to the discovery of the nature of the phenomenon under study. By the same token, with regard to the qualitative method of data analysis which is based on Maykut and Morehouse's debate ( Beginning Qualitative Research , 1994:122) and could be named Interpretative-Abstractive, Innocence and Experience has attempted to study the objectives and methods of Children's Literature. This method is supposed to be the most appropriate research method in the theory of Children's Literature. The first assumption of this study is that Children's Literature including fiction and poetry is a piece of work that can communicate with children. Hence, it is the phenomenon of “communication” that signifies Children's Literature. Therefore, the works that have succeeded in communicating with children should preferably serve as the units of analysis. In this regard, the Persian tales have been able to relate deeply to children in the course of time. The collection of 71 Persian tales compiled by Fazlollah Mohtadi ( Sobhi ) in four volumes, which is the first recorded collection of Persian folktales for children usually discussed in comparison with Charles Perrault's works in France and the Grimm Brothers' in Germany, was selected as the sample of this research, and was investigated through the Interpretative-Abstractive method. On the other hand, to find what kind of children's needs are met in the Literature for Children, and to come up with a definition of the concept of childhood, a survey of the issue was done from William Blake's time to the present with the same method. The two analyses mentioned above showed considerable overlap. In the process of analysis of childhood, the concepts Innocence, Experience, and Organized innocence as recommended by Blake were developed and enriched with regard to the various philosophical, educational, and psychological theories. The analysis of the Persian Folktales indicated that the tales aimed to facilitate the process of “child's self-actualization,” which, as the tales show, is the continuous transition from “innocence to organized innocence.” That is, by providing the imaginary process of this transition, the tales pave the way for the child to move along the same path in real life. The results of the present study also show that decentration, or, better say, the oscillation between centration and decentration could be considered as the major method of Children's Literature. One suggestion made in this study is that the literary term "defamiliarization", usually used deductively in children's literature studies in our country, be replaced with decentration”. The decentration techniques used in the Persian Folktales are categorized as (1) Narrator's intrusion, (2) Happy ending, (3) Exaggeration, (4) Inversion, (5) Self-revelation or Self-illumination of the tale, (6) Reversing, and (7) Oscillation between different points of view. Other findings of this research are as follows: • Emphasis on the efficiency of the “Interpretative-Abstractive" method in the theoretical research on Children's Literature; • Introduction of a new categorization of the Persian Folktales on the basis of the Theory of Innocence and Experience. The tales are therefore divided into 6 groups in terms of the type of conflict they induce: • experience against innocence; • experience against organized innocence; • experience against innocence and organized innocence; • experience against experience; • organized innocence against innocence, and • nonsense (no conflict) (c) Bettelheim and Favat's criticism: As for the Uses of Enchantment, Bettleheim suggests that fairytales develop the emotional aspect of children's personality, while the realistic stories empower their reasoning. Nevertheless, revealing the subtleties of the Persian Folktales--including the fairytales--in terms of decentration, the present study shows that such tales are able to develop children's cognitive abilities, as well. According to Favat, fairytales respond to the child's need for magic and animism, and they are therefore welcomed by pre-school children. Whereas, this research argues that while tales are responsive to such needs, which are mainly of centration type, they focus on decentration, i.e. rotating the child along different points of view to improve their logic and social perspective. (d) Contrary to the common belief about the Black-or-White nature of the persona in the stories, which are either good or evil with no evolutionary potentials, clear instances of developing characters were found in the Persian Folktales, a case that seriously questions the above mentioned claim. Innocence and Experience begins with a Preface and is developed into four chapters and an appendix. The design is as follows: Preface Chapter 1 : An Introduction to the Philosophy of Children's Literature • The position and characteristics of Children's Literature • The characteristics and issues of the philosophy of Children's Literature Chapter 2 : The Objective of Children's Literature, Part One: innocence and experience in Children's Poetry in Iran Chapter 3 : The Objective of Children's Literature, Part Two: innocence and experience in Persian Folktales Chapter 4 : The Method of Children's Literature Appendix As William Blake's views are introduced to Persian speakers for the first time, the Appendix includes a Persian translation of the Maurice Bowra's essay “Songs of Innocence and Experience” for a better understanding of Blake's ideas. |