Zohar Shavit,
Poetics of Children's Literature,
The University of Georgia Press,
Athens and London, 1986 ©

Conclusion

This book deals with cultural manipulations. It presents
the question of who is culturally responsible for chil-
dren's literature as a literary product of society. It asks
how it is possible to understand the behavior of chil-
dren's literature as an integral part of culture and why it is so fruitful
to do so. It also inquires into children's literature in the broadest
possible context -- in its multirelations with social norms, literary
norms, educational norms -- hence suggesting new possibilities to il-
luminate the field from these angles.

As an answer, it offers the description and analysis of the systemic
implications of the status of children's literature in culture. It exam-
ines the children's literature as a system in culture, or in other words,
as a semiotic phenomenon.

This conceptual framework makes it possible to discuss the func-
tioning of children's literature as a component of cultural systems
and to treat cardinal historical (yet dynamic) issues of children's liter-
ature in complicated perspectives. It is a motivation for viewing the
historical processes and synchronic procedures in broad contexts.
Hence issues are discussed on the theoretical and general levels, with
the analyzed texts used only as test cases.

In this framework the following questions are raise: Why is chil-
dren's literature, unlike adult literature, regarded as part of both the
educational and the literary systems at one and the same time? What
are the implications of this double attribution? How does it affect the
development, structure, textual options, readers and writers of chil-
dren's literature? How and to what extent do notions of childhood
determine the character of the texts for the child on the level of
poetic norms, as well as in regard to the acceptance of the texts by the
"people of culture"? Furthermore, it asks how writers for children
react to such societal and poetic demands in producing their texts.

While examining these processes and procedures it becomes clear

177

that they are neither random nor static. Rather they are described as
accountable and dynamic processes, governing the history and the
development of children's literature since its inception.

Indeed, the book opens with: "In the beginning was the Logos." It
starts by pursuing the linkage between the creation of the notion of
childhood and the texts for the child. Following Ariès's famous the-
sis, the book describes one of the results of the emergence of the
notion of childhood -- the appearance of books for the child, the
emergence of children's literature. This historical process is de-
scribed here from various aspects: the changing ideas of childhood
resulting in different texts for the child, especially in regard to the
child as implied reader, with "Little Red Riding Hood" serving as a
test case; the dependence of children's literature on the educational
system as it affected both its own development and its model of de-
velopment, which turn out to be the same in different national chil-
dren's literatures (Hebrew children's literature serves as a test case).
On the other hand, one of the results of the new system of education
was the emergence of a new readership, which in its search for read-
ing material became an enthusiastic promoter of chapbooks, the non-
canonized literature of the time.

How then was canonized children's literature forced to react to the
reading of material by children that was regarded as "unfit," "trash
literature"? The emergence of children's literature out of the non-
canonized adult system is described in the book in terms of the strati-
fication of the system. The stratification led to the creation of a new
opposition within the literary system: the opposition between chil-
dren's literature and adult literature. In such a way, every stage in the
development of children's literature is described not only in terms of
its linkage to the educational system, but in terms of its relations with
the entire literary polysystem, including the need to compete with
non-canonized adult literature.

As the book's point of departure is the double systemic attribution
of children's literature, it examines this attribution in both the histor-
ical context and the actual implications of writing for children. Un-
doubtedly this attribution can account for the inferior status of chil-
dren's literature in culture in general, and in the literary polysystem
in particular. This inferior status implies that writing for children

178

deprives the writer of all status symbols acquired by writers for
adults. The writer for children not only suffers from a culturally in-
ferior status, but he is subject to more compulsory poetic constraints
than the writer for adults. These constraints must be obeyed by writ-
ers for children if they wish to ensure their acceptance by the estab-
lishment of children's literature.

The issue of poetic constraints is analyzed in the book with regard
to the establishment's requirements as well as to the poetic and the-
matic implications (Danny the Champion of the World serves as a test
case). The question of poetic constraints that result from the sys-
temic position of children's literature is further discussed from an
additional point of view -- that of translation of children's books. The
discussion of translation is mainly devoted to translation of literary
models involving the transfer from the adult to the children's system
(Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels serve as test cases). In order to
overcome both the inferior status and the poetic constraints, writers
are led to seek various solutions. In this context the book examines
two such solutions found at the two opposite extremes: ambivalent
texts and non-canonized literature for children.

Analysis of the first solution, that of the ambivalent text, reveals
that writers overcome systemic constraints by manipulating two ad-
dressees and the current literary models. They use the child as a
pseudo-addressee but actually assume the adult as a reader, hence
gaining the liberty to manipulate the existing models of children's
literature and to suggest a new model (Alice in Wonderland serves as a
test case).

In examining the other opposite solution, that of non-canonized
children's literature, it is maintained that writers manage to ignore
constraints by consciously waiving adult approval. This is textually
done by creating a world that excludes adults, creating the illusion of
an exclusive world of children (the Nancy Drew series and Enid
Blyton's books serve as test cases).

This book examines the need for children's literature to function
while "walking the tightrope" between the official addressee (the
child) and those who decide the character of his culture (the adults).
In this context it explores the interrelations between literary and so-
cial constraints that create the history, inventory, and structure of

179

children's literature. How children's literature manages to function
in such a complicated net of systems is actually the core of the book;
it is practically what it is all about.

This however is just the beginning. I hope that the directions and
questions suggested by my book will prompt further research and
study in children's literature.

180

Contents