Poetik der Zähmung. Widerspenstige, Aufmüpfige, Wilde und kleine Rebellische in der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts
Keywords:
Children’s and young adult literature from the 18th and 19th century, literary character, image of childhood, poetics, normAbstract
This article describes the role of unruly, defiant, wild and rebellious child characters in children’s and young adult literature from the 18th and 19th century. It will demonstrate a development in their significance within the context of role models, ideals and cautionary images, from a warning example to the poetics of taming, which is characterized by the processes of increasing literarisation. For a long time these child characters were supposed to act as deviant objects of fascination – with the aim of aesthetically coaxing children into compliant behaviour. This literarisation between the poles of pedagogisation and the pursuit of aesthetic autonomy is part of a process of modernisation. This process is marked by a differentiation of form and genre varieties of these wayward characters. Innovations in children’s literature such as Heinrich Hoffmann’s Struwwelpeter [Shock-headed Peter] or Wilhelm Busch’s Max und Moritz [Max and Moritz: A Story of Seven Boyish Pranks] manage to aesthetically popularise deviant behaviour through their well-known child characters and thereby overcome this purely normative function of children’s literature. (transl. by Ariane Manutscheri)
