Goodbye, Ghetto: Further Comparative Approaches to Children's Literature

Abstract

In 2005 Emer O'Sullivan published the most comprehensive outline to date of a comparative approach to the study of literature and other cultural productions for the young. She presents nine constituent areas of comparative study in relation to children's literature (theory of children's literature, contact and transfer studies, comparative poetics, intertextuality studies, intermediality studies, image studies, comparative genre studies, comparative historiography of children's literature, comparative history of children's literature studies), which she illustrates with examples from around the world. But, although extensive, O'Sullivan's proposal is not without its blind spots, and she acknowledges that it “can only be enhanced by future discussion and modification” (12). With the aim of bolstering the field of children's literature, I here propose an area of comparative research overlooked by O'Sullivan. I also suggest extensions to her conception of comparative literature and to her handling of reception or reader response.