Children's Literature Studies
Year:2019 | Volume:10 | Issue:1 (19)|Papers Count:8

Folktales are rich sources of beliefs long obsolete and no longer in line with religious and ethics of present times that are used extensively in literary studies. Marriage of princesses is one of the themes of such tales in which sometimes there are animal-grooms. In modern rewritings of some of these tales, such themes are not prominent due to many reasons. In this study citing several such tales, the reasons for the appearance and transformation of these tales are analyzed followed by the common virtues in these tales in different cultures. It is argued that though there are basic commonalities in different cultures, these tales have transformed in some cultures.

Much the same way as in western countries, the academization of Children's Literature in Iran has led to a greater attention being paid to method, resulting in outstanding methodological developments in Children's Literature Studies; however, repetitive shortcomings and drawbacks in student studies are alarming, necessitating a pathological study of theses in this field. We carried out this research to underscore such weak points and debate them. The samples include 25 MA theses in Children’ s Literature submitted to the 4th biennial Festival of the Distinguished Theses held by Shiraz University Centre for Children's Literature Studies (SUCCLS), in 1396. We have studied all the samples and have offered an index of flaws and shortcomings and their percentages. Then we tried to highlight the flaws and argue about them further. We have used the availability sampling method and Mayring’ s qualitative content analysis (2000) as our research technique. Twenty-seven shortcomings are listed in this article. According to the percentages, avoiding the use of first person pronoun when the researcher is referring to him/herself is the most frequently repeated problem. Second in frequency is that reference is not made to the literature review and no comparison is drawn between the findings of research and the body of available literature accumulated so far. The next problem very often traced is the fading away of creativity and literary taste in academic writing. According to the findings of this research, students need to have a broader study of research and should get familiar with the distinguished researches in the national and international domains. Furthermore, in order to promote the quality of academic children’ s literature, it is inevitably necessary for the supervisors, advisors and referees to pay a greater and more exact attention to the flaws and drawbacks of such researches.

Fantasy is a literary genre that has been created in the last century in response to rationalism, in which events, characters, and situations are made beyond our beliefs. Fantasies give their readers the possibility of analogy between different worlds. This aspect of fantasy has received warm response from young adults. In the present study, archetypal criticism is used to compare J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and Ali Khaste's Fighters of Parle Aan in order to see whether the mythical and magical concepts in these works have strengthened the structure of the story and if Fighters of Parle Aan can be considered a successful fantasy in comparison with Harry Potter. It is argued that the mythical narration with the help of other element of the plots has been helpful in the structure of these stories. Fighters of Parle Aan can be considered as a successful Iranian fantasy.

Canned Giant written by Mehdi Rajabi is a fantasy on two levels of real and unreal. In the real world, the young adult experiences freedom from dominant direct education living a life away from grown up expectations while facing great challenges. In the unreal, he goes to the world of the magician and the giant and the dream signifying one's movement from consciousness to the unconscious. This voyage leads to joining of inner and outer conflicts and finally maturity. In this study, focusing on Jung's views on individuation as well as Campbell's hero's journey analyzes this novel. It is argued that in contrast to supernatural myths of voyage, the hero is entangled with real crises of childhood and adolescence in unreal worlds and by recognizing conflicts and fears, he separates himself to reach the real world. The ending of such stories leads to individuation of the hero through gaining real experiences.

This article is an archetypal study of hero's journey in the story of Little Black Fish by Samad Behrangi. Campbell has considered three stages for the hero's Journey: Departure, separation and return. He believes that the development of archetypes requires passing through these stages. Pearson believes that twelve archetypes get active during these three stages. In the starting stage, archetypes of innocence, orphan, warrior and protector become active; in the second stage, seeker, destroyer, lover and creator and in return stage, the governor, wizard, wise and clown get active. This story can be considered as describing the individuation process of the little black fish. In this narrative, the little fish, influenced by an old snail hoping starts his journey to reach the sea that is a symbol of his unconscious to meet with anima. The symbolic end of the story has prevented the return stage; hence, the archetype of wizard is not manifested in the transformation of the hero.

One approach to the critical theory of comparative literature based on psychological criticism is the archetypal criticism that comes from Carl Jung's psychological ideas. This kind of literary criticism seeks the relationship between the mind of the writer and archetypal structure. Archetype as a typical form in the human subconscious memory consists of different types. Archetype of the child can have subdivisions based on various aspects of the child in a life time. In this paper the child archetype is analyzed in the stories of two famous writers of Arabic and Persian literature in order to see the various aspects of the archetype of the child reflected in the works of Kamil Kaylani and Samad Behrangi. The results of this research show that many of the different aspects of the archetype of the child are presented in the stories of two authors, showing the proximity and consistency of their thoughts.

This paper is a study of principles and criteria of rewriting in children and young adult literature in Shahnameh's rewritings. To this end, some books and articles on language learning and stages of child's linguistic development, as well as psychology of education, developmental psychology, elements of fiction and story-writing for children were studied in order to gain information about needs and interests of children and young adults. Some criteria were identified and defined in three parts: linguistic, content (educational) and technical (story-writing methods). Then, the rewritings published based on Ferdowsi's Shahnameh for children and young adults were selected and analyzed based on the above-mentioned criteria. The obtained results show that in the linguistic area, writers have simply focused on simplifying the language of the original text without considering the language features and abilities of their readers at different age groups. In the content area, most of the writers have focused on the mental, emotional and social characteristics of their readers, but technically, there is less creativity in rewritings considering the original text. The writers have rewritten the stories based on the original text and just in simple language.

Fantasy as a genre is regarded as imagination about a subject in the past or an event in the future that is not real now, but relies on individual's knowledge and imagination. Fantasy literature, as it stands today, arose in Europe in the eighteenth century, the age of Enlightenment, in Europe, although its elements exist in ancient myths and legends. In this research, we have studied the works in the field of children's fantasy literature in both Persian and English languages from the perspective of linguistic stylistics. To do this, we chose Beatrix Potter series in English and the collection of Small Stories for Small Children in Persian. The results show that fantasy as a branch of literature in Persian and English has significant differences and similarities.