Introduction

Abstract

Introduction Maria Nikolajeva The purpose of this new column is to introduce a wider perspective on international scholarship in children's literature to the audience of the Children's Literature Association Quarterly. Recently the International Committee of the Children's Literature Association has taken some steps to bring more international research and criticism to the attention of its members. These steps include special panels and sessions at the annual conferences, a travel grant intended to bring one distinguished international scholar to each conference, and various other endeavors. A vast amount of research carried out in European countries and elsewhere is basically unknown in the English-speaking world. The language barrier is just one reason. It is also the relatively deliberate self-isolation of some nations, often due to historical and political reasons. As a result, scholars focus consciously on their national children's literature and thus develop a sense of self-sufficiency in regard to the development of theory and criticism. There are some obvious parallels within general criticism. For instance, the French and Anglo-American feminist theory developed in happy, almost mutual ignorance. However, by now the two directions have not only discovered each other, but successfully incorporated each other's achievements. It is to be hoped that children's literature criticism can also benefit from a broader acquaintance with scholarly results from other countries and cultures. Starting the column with a survey of German research was a very deliberate decision to highlight the enormous diversity of approaches and priorities within our discipline. From Hans-Heino Ewers' essay we can clearly see that the predominantly text-oriented, decontextualized study of children's literature in the wake of New Criticism, which I find prevalent in English-language criticism, is not the only possible strategy. It is illuminating that the enormous corpus of still uncollected and uncatalogued children's literature written in German stimulates almost obsessive bibliographical and historical research. In fact, annotated bibliographies and historical surveys seem not only to comprise the bulk of scholarly publications, but they also enjoy in the first place a higher status than generic or thematic studies. Peter Hunt has repeatedly questioned children's literature scholars' focus on "books that were for children" rather than "books that are for children" (see e.g., Hunt, "Dragons"). His skepticism is still more relevant for German research that obviously neglects contemporary and popular children's books in favor of old and forgotten texts. Given the political history of Germany in the twentieth century, this scholarly strategy is hardly unexpected. (It reminds me of Mikhail Bakhtin, who preferred to theorize around Rabelais as a way to avoid contemporary ideologically charged literature.) At the same time, the relatively low prestige of children's literature research apparently precludes considering the history of children's literature in a broader context of the mainstream, as do some recent Anglo-American publications, for instance, Introducing Children's Literature, by Deborah Cogan Thacker and Jean Webb. The question that has preoccupied most of the leading children's literature scholars in the English-speaking world, such as Alison Lurie, Jacqueline Rose, Perry Nodelman, Peter Hunt, Rod McGillis, or John Stephens, concerning the definition and essence of children's literature, appears extraneous to German research. Instead, the objective is a meticulous classification and description of a corpus of predefined texts. Thus, German children's literature criticism, as Hans-Heino Ewers himself comments, lacks the diversity of approaches notable in Anglo-American research and gives some directions priority over others. This is perhaps the result of a conscious self-isolation of German scholarship that refrains from acknowledging and utilizing the achievements of international research. But as a result, it appears considerably more consolidated and purposeful, as if working toward the same well-defined goal. In this light, it is remarkable for me as a Swedish scholar to see how influential the Grand Old Man Göte Klingberg seems to be in Germany. Klingberg was the pioneer of children's literature studies in Sweden in the '60s and early '70s, completing the first Swedish Ph.D. dissertation in children's literature, and paving the way for the first generation of serious scholars. While he is still highly acclaimed for...