This undergraduate course explores the historical development and cultural particularities of Scandinavian children's literature in English translation. The history of this subject dates back to the Enlightenment, when didactic and moralistic writings were aimed at socializing children's emotions and desires into acceptable bourgeois family norms. The Romantic era of the 19th century renewed this agenda by putting another, more emotional and imaginative, mode of writing center stage. In the fairy tales and stories told for children by Hans Christian Andersen, the Danish father of the Scandinavian fairy tale, children's lives, while still subjected to a variety of restrictions, are no longer inferior to the middle-class norms of grownups. In fact, their oral culture and putative naturalness is evoked as a preferable alternative to the rigid cultural standards of their elders, and valued as a source of protest and dissent.
This move toward individualism and independence - furthered by an increasing literacy and by the modern market place for cultural products - later paved the way for such beloved twentieth-century figures as Pippi Longstocking in the books by Swedish author Astrid Lindgren, and for the elusive Moomins in Finland-Swedish author and artist Tove Jansson's work. The inspiration from Andersen and some of his contemporaries also resulted in a diversity of genres for specific gender and age groups and for specific purposes, including adventure stories for boys and mass cultural entertainment for every young person. At times, social and political agendas have dispensed with fantasy in favor of realism. But on the whole the realistic and the imaginary have increasingly interacted with one another since Scandinavian children's literature entered its post-WWII golden era, which has seen a proliferation of media and other cultural opportunities for children and young adults.
One major children's book will be discussed in this context every week-with the required assistance of historical surveys and literary, pedagogical, and cultural criticism. Works from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland will be considered almost equally, and supplementary illustrations and other visual materials will be provided.
The course meets the LE Literature Core requirement by critically analyzing and reflecting on canonical works of Scandinavian (Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish) children's literature in English translation on the background of children's culture within Scandinavian culture at large.