This thesis takes three works of prose fiction from the Victorian and Edwardian period that contain animal characters that interact with the human world. The fantastic narratives that will be...Show moreThis thesis takes three works of prose fiction from the Victorian and Edwardian period that contain animal characters that interact with the human world. The fantastic narratives that will be explored are: Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865); Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Books (1894-5); and Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows (1908). Furthermore, it argues that anthropomorphism and zoomorphism act as core elements in these narratives to describe the complex formation of identity in Victorian Britain and to provide an opportunity covertly to criticize issues in the Victorian social class system. Furthermore, the thesis analyses these magical worlds as places where children’s imagination can play with the animal-human divide.Show less
This thesis questions how discursive practices in different adaptations of the same fairy tale: Little Red Riding Hood, reflect social and ideological values of their time and place, with regard to...Show moreThis thesis questions how discursive practices in different adaptations of the same fairy tale: Little Red Riding Hood, reflect social and ideological values of their time and place, with regard to gender ideologies and gender representation. This analysis is guided by poststructural theories of feminism that consider gender as a socially produced category, predominantly through language. This allows for the reading of “girlhood”, as a contested category involving various and often competing discourses of femininity. Additionally, this research relies on critical discourse analysis, which allows for a close reading of the authors’ linguistic choices that are potentially significant, as they encode and promulgate particular ideologies.Show less
This thesis explores the impact of evolutionary theory on narrative form in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking–Glass and What Alice Found There (1872)....Show moreThis thesis explores the impact of evolutionary theory on narrative form in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking–Glass and What Alice Found There (1872). It argues that Lewis Carroll was inspired and influenced by Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory in writing the Alice books.Show less
This thesis aims to prove children's literature and adult literature share a similar format, merely altered to fit the needs of the intended audience. It does so by providing an analysis of both J...Show moreThis thesis aims to prove children's literature and adult literature share a similar format, merely altered to fit the needs of the intended audience. It does so by providing an analysis of both J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan and The Little White Bird and compares the two by means of four literary features: perspective, themes, motifs and style.Show less
Children’s literature is often strictly bound to those of childhood. Therefore, children’s literature is considered to have an inferior status being when compared to other genres of literature....Show moreChildren’s literature is often strictly bound to those of childhood. Therefore, children’s literature is considered to have an inferior status being when compared to other genres of literature. Because of this inferior status, several scholars believe that children’s literature finds itself in a peripheral position in the literary polysystem: a structure which assumes interdependent relations between various genres. However, since the introduction of the literary polysystem, scholars have suggested that there has been a shift as children’s literature has gained some academic and critical foothold. This diachronic case-study aimed to find out if the ‘implied’ improved status of children’s literature in the literary polysystem can be observed in the translation of children’s literature. By applying Gideon Toury’s three-phase methodology for systematic descriptive translation studies (DTS), I have isolated several translational phenomena, which allowed for discussion regarding the norms which governed the translation in the past and in the present and how these have shifted.Show less
In 1986, Zohar Shavit claimed in her Poetics of Children’s Literature that children’s literature’s position may cause translators to neglect the beauty and structure of a source text and focus more...Show moreIn 1986, Zohar Shavit claimed in her Poetics of Children’s Literature that children’s literature’s position may cause translators to neglect the beauty and structure of a source text and focus more on the readability of the target text. According to Shavit, the lower position of children’s literature leads to the fact that a translator of children’s literature is permitted to take greater liberties in a translation, leading to what Antoine Berman would call a “textual deformation”. Among translators and translation theorists, disagreement exists on whether staying close to the source text, which would lead to a foreignizing effect, or bringing the text to the reader, creating a domesticating effect, is the most desirable strategy. Lawrence Venuti and Antoine Berman are strongly in favor of foreignizing translations, and do not deem the readability of a translation as most important, but instead advocate exposing the reader to foreign concepts from the source text and language. In order to test Zohar Shavit’s claim that children’s literature is translated rather freely and link it to Lawrence Venuti’s accusation that Anglo-American translations are predominately domesticating, I will analyze six children’s books and their translations by means of a selected number of Antoine Berman’s deforming tendencies, i.e. rationalization, expansion, clarification, and the destruction of expressions and idioms.Show less
According to Nicholas Tucker, “it is too much of a child to expect him to see life in the raw as it really is” (53). It is this very notion that Philip Pullman has explored thoroughly in his...Show moreAccording to Nicholas Tucker, “it is too much of a child to expect him to see life in the raw as it really is” (53). It is this very notion that Philip Pullman has explored thoroughly in his trilogy His Dark Materials. However, Pullman did present his highly critical message regarding the Church and religion to the reader, while employing conventions of children’s literature. His decision to share his polemical thoughts on the Church via children’s literature thus might be seen as a way of influencing children, but the question remains whether this was his intention.Show less
Animals that dress up like children, but lose their clothes when they are in danger: how far does the anthropomorphism go in Beatrix Potter’s stories? Potter made her animal characters to resemble...Show moreAnimals that dress up like children, but lose their clothes when they are in danger: how far does the anthropomorphism go in Beatrix Potter’s stories? Potter made her animal characters to resemble children, but she deliberately let them keep many of their natural animal instincts, too. These wild, animalistic characteristics are also seen in the pictures, which are naturalistic and scrupulously accurate. Because of the obvious presence of nature in the stories, it is hard to pin down the line between the human and the animal. But the animals in Potter’s stories were never meant to fully substitute for humans as in the traditional fable. They have kept their natural instincts and basic habits, and behave only like humans until they have to face a danger that is natural for animals of their kind, for example predators. The moment their instinct takes over, they tend to lose their clothing, and they start walking on four legs again. The role of mothers seems to be the key to anthropomorphism. They provide the link between the animal world and the human world, as in both they are wearing clothes (presumably), and are trying to teach their children good behaviour, according to the social class they are in. The clothing that Potter’s characters are made to wear by their mothers are mainly for them to look socially acceptable, which suggests middle or upper class, as in the lower classes the clothing was of smaller importance.The anthropomorphism is projected onto the child animals by their mothers, who seem determined to raise them correctly, exactly as human mothers in their time and class would have done. Thus we come back to Cunningham, with his suggestion that in order to understand the child, we should focus on the cultural construction of ideas concerning childhood, which in this case means the social class system of the 1900s.Show less
This thesis explores the translation choices that have been made in the dubbing of the 2005 film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. The original film was approved for...Show moreThis thesis explores the translation choices that have been made in the dubbing of the 2005 film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. The original film was approved for audiences of 12 years and older. In the Netherlands, a Dutch spoken version was released which was approved for 6 years and older. Establishing whether the dubbed version of the film uses simpler language in order to cater for a younger audience than the original version, was done by comparing commonly used procedures in both the field of audiovisual translation and translation of children's literature. Translation theories by Mieke Desmet, B.J. Epstein, Frederic Chaume and Irene Ranzato form the foundation of the theoretical background.Show less
