The Reading Subject in Literature for Children

Abstract: The Reading Subject The article discusses the theories and current critical approaches to the formation of the reading subject in literature for children. It describes briefly the current position of the study of children’s literature with reference to other forms of scholarship, for example, feminist theory and literary historicism, which have influenced the cultural and academic climate that has encouraged the development of the critical study of children’s literature, also within the academic environment. Definitions of children’s literature are considered, especially in relation to various definitions of the child/children and in view of the construction of the (fictional) child reader to whom books are addressed. Thus the role of books is taken into account in the construction of an imaginary childhood, which is seen as a determining factor in the emotional and social formation of children just as narrative in general is seen to play a pivotal role in the way we interpret ourselves as adults. The complex interrelations that are seen to exist between the reader, narrative fictions and the formation of reading subject positions cause concern for the way the inexperienced child reader can be subjected to the overt/covert ideological content of narrative. References are made to the relation between subjectivity, ideology and narratives, and to what are considered to be basic forms of ideological expression. The reading strategy that is widely adopted in schools of total identification with the focaliser is questioned. Examples are taken of the way the fairy tale was manipulated in 17th century France to further literary ‘socialisation’, and in Germany in the Weimar and Nazi periods bound up with the ‘civilising’ process. The article concludes with reference to the suggestion made and shared by theorists, critics and writers, that young readers can be helped to oppose/control the subject position implied by the text by being taught to recognise textual strategies through which narratives are constructed.