Fantastic children's and youth literature
The fantastic children's literature generally refers to a meeting of real , ordinary and magical , irrational world (so-called two-world model ). In contrast to horror and horror stories , which because of their effect are only partially suitable for children and young people, the reader is not enlightened about the extraordinary occurrences of the magical world in the purely fantastic story. Furthermore, in the present, which is bundled in the broadest sense of fantasy science fiction - genre (both see the distinction there) not treated and only consulted as a reference.
The creation of fantastic literature
Fantastic stories published before World War II were rarely tailored to a child or adolescent audience. Works such as Thomas Morus ' Utopia or Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift are typical examples of texts with which the authors also political and enlightened objectives pursued and which were directed at adults. It was only in the course of time that the fabrics were seen as suitable for children and young people - also through numerous child-friendly treatments; Erich Kästner , for example, who wrote fantastic novels for children with Der 35. Mai or Konrad rides in the South Seas and The Conference of Animals , variants of Gulliver's travels and the adventures of Baron Münchhausen . Nevertheless, there was fantastic children's literature before 1945, even if such stories were still regarded as fairy tales in Germany before 1950 .
Before that there were various works that were attributed to the fantastic, but which were not necessarily understood as books for children or young people. In Germany, however, ETA Hoffmann had already written the story Nutcracker and Mouse King in 1816 , which, unlike The Sandman , was aimed primarily at young readers. Over the years, however, the reception of works that were originally intended for adults also changed: the works of Adelbert von Chamissos and Achim von Arnim, for example, were now also read by young people, and Goethe's Erlkönig and Theodor Storms Schimmelreiter are nowadays not only considered for young people are seen as suitable, but even treated mainly in school lessons.
In America, Nathaniel Hawthorne , Washington Irving and Edgar Allan Poe published fantastic stories that children and young people love to read today, while in Russia renowned authors such as Alexander Pushkin , Nikolai Gogol and Fyodor Dostoyevsky . The Czech Franz Kafka wrote more for adults, but the absurd actions he describes (especially Metamorphosis (1915)) also appeal to the humor of young people and reflect their insecurity with their environment.
The development of fantastic children's and youth literature
Until 1945
Due to the long-lasting success of Fantastik, but also of Gothic Novels , fantastic literature was only created late, especially for young people. Anglo-Saxon literature in particular was a pioneer and produced an almost inexhaustible supply of classics; These include Alice in Wonderland (1865) by Lewis Carroll , The Story of Peter Rabbit (1902) by Beatrix Potter , Peter Pan (1911) by JM Barrie , Winnie the Pooh (1926) by AA Milne , The Wind in the Willows (1908 ) by Kenneth Grahame , Psammy Provides Adventure (1902) by Edith Nesbit and The Hobbit (1937) by JRR Tolkien . In other languages, for example, Pinocchio (1865) by Carlo Collodi and Gerdt von Bassewitz 's description of Peterchens Mondfahrt (1911) appeared.
One of the classics from that time is L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz (1900), which is perhaps the first American novel of this genre. Appeared still in the midst of World War II with The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery , a French work which today as moral is conceived tale.
Children's books often played in the animal world: from 1906 the wonderful journey of little Nils Holgersson with the wild geese appeared , a story by Nobel Prize winner Selma Lagerlöf , in which a 14-year-old boy is transformed into an elf and travels through Sweden with a ganter from his farm; and Rudyard Kipling offset from 1894 in his jungle books a boy in a position with animals of the Indian jungle to speak; In 1923 Felix Salten published the novel Bambi , in which the growing up of the deer of the same name is told - people do not appear as protagonists , but only act as a threat to the main characters; The protagonist of the book Maya the Bee and Her Adventures by Waldemar Bonsels , published in 1912, is the insect of the same name that is born and has to find its way around its world. The last two books, like many of the successes of that time, are hardly distributed today.
After the end of the Second World War
In German-speaking countries
After the Second World War, the focus of children's and youth literature was initially on the classics of the previous decades ( Robinson Crusoe , Winnetou , Treasure Island ). For girls, Heidi , The Defiant Head and Nesthäkchen were considered appropriate. There was no modern, age-appropriate literature that reflected reality, but was not in demand in the post-war period either. According to the culture-preserving positions of the time, children should be protected from the problems of growing up, for which fantastic stories were offered that ignored the problems of everyday life.
Pioneering work was done by James Krüss , Otfried Preußler and Paul Maar , who began with children's stories in the 1950s and who were later accused of uncritically following the basic conservative values of the times .
In 1954, Anna Krüger was one of the first to find out in the publication Das Buch - Companions of Your Children that there were more and more fantastic books for children and young people, which differed increasingly from traditional fairy tales and which had to be viewed as a separate area of literature. The fantastic stories from other European countries, which became more and more popular at the beginning of the 1950s, contributed to this view. In addition to the aforementioned, the Mary Poppins books by Pamela L. Travers , Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking , which offered girls in particular a new role model, and Hugh Lofting's Doctor Dolittle and his animals , whose protagonist has the ability to work with animals to speak. Some of these works only found their way to Germany now, even though they had been written long before (the first part of the Doktor Dolittle series was published in 1920).
International
Internationally, this genre continued to be shaped by English fantasy in the post-war period : CS Lewis wrote the seven-part series The Chronicles of Narnia from 1949, emulating his friend JRR Tolkien , who in 1954 published what is probably the most influential fantasy work of all: The Lord of the Rings , the It fascinated young people and adults alike and made the genre accessible to new audiences. An endless number of novels followed Tolkien's Tales from Middle-earth , from The Chronicles of Prydain Lloyd Alexander (from 1964) to Ursula K. Le Guin's Earth Sea Cycle (from 1968) to Christopher Paolini's Eragon series (from 2004).
One of the best-known novels for young people is Lord of the Flies (1954), whose classification as fantastic (within the framework of science fiction) is controversial and which tells of a group of students who are to be brought to safety from a nuclear attack , but whose plane crashes. William Golding received the Nobel Prize for Literature for this .
One of the best-known authors in the field of fantastic children's books is Roald Dahl , who from 1961 wrote his numerous children's books in which children meet giants, witches, giant peaches and Oompa Loompas or develop magical powers. Unmatched in her wealth of thoughts and ideas is the Swede Astrid Lindgren , who invented the flying Karlsson from the roof , plus the worlds in which the boy wanders, whom his father Mio, my Mio calls, and the Lionheart brothers .
Fantastic elements are also increasingly found in picture books . Dr. Seuss , one of the best-known American children's book authors, invented the tomcat with a hat (1957), the Grinch (1957) who wants to steal Christmas, and the Hu, little creatures who get into an emergency and ask an elephant for help ( Horton hears a Hu , 1954); the disgruntled monster Shrek (1990) comes from William Steig ; Maurice Sendak also found countless imitators , who in Where the Wild Things Are (1963) lets his little hero rise in his mind to become king of the monsters. Animals are often used, but are modeled on humans and rarely behave appropriately. Mostly they represent types in the manner of the fable : the mouse is often weak but intelligent during confrontations ( Julia Donaldson , Der Grüffelo , 1999), while wolves behave wild and stubborn ( David Melling , Die wilden Strolche , 2007).
From the late 1960s
German-speaking area
It was not until the end of the 1960s that German-speaking authors began to deal with children's and young people's literature on a large scale. It was recognized that books for children and young people can contribute to socialization and upbringing . The 68 movement set assertiveness, self-confidence and the ability to criticize as educational goals . Against this background, Paul Maar achieved a great success with his character of Sams , which he first performed in 1973 in A Week Full of Saturdays . The story of the reserved, fearful Mr. Taschenbier, who has little self-confidence to oppose outrageous contemporaries, gave children enough space for identification . At the same time, the pig-nosed Sams, endowed with an extraordinary wit and constantly prone to crazy and sometimes disrespectful ideas, fits seamlessly into the series of unadapted children's characters such as Struwwelpeter , Max and Moritz or Pippi Longstocking . Despite all the comedy that Sams brings with it, it takes a critical stance towards the adult world, which is characterized by a sense of authority.
Christine Nöstlingers We don't care about the Gurkenkönig (1972) is an example of how the fantastic element can have an effect on reality. Just as the 'Gurkingers' drive out their despotic king, the Hogelmann family succeeds in questioning the power relations in the family and breaking away from their authoritarian father, in accordance with the social ideals of the time. At the same time, Otfried Preussler's Krabat (1971) and Michael Ende's Momo (1973), both of whom stand in the tradition of the art fairy tale , raised children's and young people's literature to a unique level through its complexity and claim, and helped their works to gain recognition as literature.
A social trend reversal began at the end of the 1970s: a retreat into the private sphere, into inwardness , which is also visible in children's and youth literature. In Oh, how beautiful is Panama (1978), the draftsman and copywriter Janosch sends a little bear and a little tiger on an adventurous journey to unknown Panama, at the end of which they come home ignorant. The motto here is: It's best at home.
In 1979, The Neverending Story by Michael Ende appeared, in which the path to a fantastic world does not mean an escape, but a detour back into real life. After his return, the young Bastian Balthasar Bux can tackle his everyday problems with a lot of self-confidence.
Together with Momo , The Neverending Story led the bestseller lists for years and established the genre in Germany. Michael Ende became one of the first worldwide successful authors of the post-war period, also because his stories were also read by adults.
International
Various books on magicians have appeared internationally: Diana Wynne Jones , Die Welt des Chrestomanci (from 1977); Richard Carpenter , Catweazle (1970); and acts of knighthood such as Robert Bolt 's children's drama The Little Fat Knight (1964). In the world of animals, Richard Adams settled his stories Down by the River and The Dogs of the Black Death , which have a rather gloomy and thoughtful tone.
In 1979, Katherine Paterson wrote The Bridge to Another Land, a story about two children who flee from the depressing experiences of their lives to a fantastic substitute world, a theme that is similar to the Neverending Story .
In 1967, the first volume appeared that of Irina Korshunov devised Wawuschels with the green hair , a family of small people living in a mountain. Other fantasy figures are, for example, the figures around the Barbapapa (1970) devised by Annette Tison .
1980-1996
In the 1980s, fantastic children's and youth literature fell into a crisis. The trigger was the simultaneous strengthening of the American film industry , which, after the end of New Hollywood, recognized the commercial potential of films that are made especially for children and young people. The highlight was the science fiction and children's film E. T. - The Extra Terrestrial , which was considered the most successful film in history for several years. In connection with the ever better possibilities in the creation of trick effects, more and more fantastic films were made, for which 'books about film', books 'inspired by film' and sometimes entire book series were written ( Star Wars ). Even film series like Die Märchenbraut , Pan Tau and Patrik Pacard saw book exploitation.
German-speaking area
A further complicating factor for German-language fantastic literature was that most of the authors, some of whom had been supplying books for decades, now shifted their stories to reality and hardly used any fantastic elements. Michael Ende rubbed himself up in disputes about the film versions of his books and the allegations that he had insulted an unpopular critic ( Marcel Reich-Ranicki ) in his last children's book Der satanarchäolügenialkohöllische Wunschpunsch . Only a few writers such as Peter Hacks with Liebkind im Vogelnest (1984) or Tilde Michels ( Kleiner König Kalle Wirsch , 1969) presented original works that can be assigned to this genre, but are mostly limited to a child audience. Series such as Der kleine Vampir by Angela Sommer-Bodenburg or Meister Eder und seine Pumuckl by Ellis Kaut were particularly successful, but the latter was mainly due to the television and radio play adaptation - it was also created in the 1960s.
It is telling that Gudrun Pausewang anchored her youth novels The Last Children of Schewenborn and The Cloud about fictitious accidents in a nuclear power plant in the world of her readers and designed them as science fiction rather than fantasy. At the beginning of their careers, other authors such as Wolfgang Hohlbein primarily produced mass-produced goods and oriented themselves to the standards of the genre, which were only changed slightly.
International
Here, too, some of the most famous authors gave up their careers or died (Astrid Lindgren, Roald Dahl). The most successful work of this time was probably the book The Mists of Avalon (1982) by the fantasy author Marion Zimmer Bradley , which was aimed more at an adult audience, and which was followed by several sequels.
The Dutch artist Tonke Dragt was active from the 1960s to the 2000s , and she received international awards for her books and in 2004 for her novel The Letter for the King , which was also internationally successful as a film of the same name , with the stylus of the pen 1955-2004 honored. This special award from the Silver Stylus, the Dutch State Prize for Literature, honors the best book for young people of the past 50 years.
Since 1997
The genre was fundamentally reanimated by the worldwide success of the heptalogy around the wizarding student Harry Potter , with which the author Joanne K. Rowling reached an unprecedented audience from 1997 and seduced children into reading who had previously had no interest in it. As a result, numerous epigones appeared who varied the plot of their role model more or less skillfully, such as Eoin Colfer's stories about Artemis Fowl . Several successful fantasy series were written by high school students, Christopher Paolini and Flavia Bujor , but their originality was quite controversial.
Cornelia Funke , on the other hand, has proven with her various publications that she is able to address a different audience of different age groups. Fantastic stories are above all those about the elf Potilla , Drachenreiter and the trilogy that began with Inkheart (2003). Walter Moers also had great success with his novel Die 13½ Leben des Käpt'n Blaubär , published in 1999 , which marks the beginning of the series about the fictional continent of Zamonia , which continues to this day . The Zamonien books are aimed at both young and adult audiences. Other successful German authors in this genre are Kai Meyer ( Frostfeuer , 2005), Andreas Steinhöfel ( Der mechanical Prince , 2003) and Wolfgang Hohlbein .
Philip Pullman won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Prize for his series His Dark Materials (from 1995), which plays in different worlds . Neil Gaiman described in 1998 in Der Sternwanderer a world that borders on a fantastic one that a boy must one day enter. In 2005, Stephenie Meyer's triumphal march began with Bis (s) zum Dawn. With her four-part love story of a modern young woman and a vampire, she mainly reached a female audience and stormed the bestseller lists.
The fantastic genre has now become one of the most successful genres in children's and young people's literature, which encourages publishers and authors to do more work again. It also becomes attractive to writers like Salman Rushdie ( Harun and the Sea of Stories ), Isabel Allende ( The City of Wild Gods ), Michael Chabon ( Summer Land ) and Stephen King ( The Eyes of the Dragon ), who otherwise turn to adults .
subjects
The themes and motifs in the fantastic children's and youth literature are diverse; But there are definitely focal points that form the framework of many fantastic stories:
Otherworld
Many fantastic stories take place in our known world, into which the fantastic then penetrates ( EB White , Klein-Stuart , 1945).
In addition, various novels are set in a different world, an other world . The portrayal or exploration of this world always takes a significant part of the plot.
These other worlds can have a different relationship to the real world. Sometimes the other worlds are integrated into the normal world, as in Otfried Preussler's Der kleine Wassermann (1956), or by chance a person ends up in a completely alien world in which he has to find his way around, experiences adventures and searches for a way back . The transition can take place through a storm (L. Frank Baums The Wizard of Oz ), by means of one's own imagination (Michael Ende, The Neverending Story ) or through a closet (C. S. Lewis' Die Chroniken von Narnia ).
It can also be a fantastic modification of our known world or parallel worlds: in the different worlds from Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials , mysticism and science coexist on an equal footing.
One should still think of strange worlds based on the mythical , in which people are protagonists such as B. the archipelago in Ursula K. Le Guin's Earth Sea cycle or Middle Earth, the world of JRR Tolkien, in which people live together with various mythical creatures.
Sometimes the plot takes us into an indefinite world in which there are no people, but imaginary beings act as the main characters, as in the stories about the Moomins by Tove Jansson .
travel
The travel motif takes up a lot of space in fantastic literature. As a rule, it takes place in an Otherworld, but does not have to be (Stephen King and Peter Straub , Der Talisman (1984) plays half in two worlds). A distinction is made between two types: on the one hand, journeys in which the goal and the way to get there are in the foreground and, on the other hand, journeys that mean a journey to yourself. Often one finds both in mixed form: Astrid Lindgren's Die Brüder Löwenherz tells of the journey to the mythical land of Nangijala, which is at the same time a journey of self-discovery and contributes to the victory over one's own fears.
If the traveler is a child or adolescent, the journey always reflects the maturation of the character ( Bildungsroman ). Therefore, this story can also be of interest to older readers, because the process of growing up is at the heart of the plot. At the end of the story, the main character has mostly grown up .
Good and evil
The motifs light and darkness, good and bad appear in most works of fantastic children's and youth literature: the story of the Löwenherz brothers (Astrid Lindgren), for example, steers towards the great battle between good and evil, represented by the inhabitants of the Wild Rose Valley and the Tyrant Tengil, too. Other examples are Krabat (Otfried Preußler) and Timm Thaler or James Krüss' sold laughter or Harry Potter 's conflict with Lord Voldemort.
distribution
series
In fantasy literature in particular, it can be observed that entire series of novels are often written. Planned series mostly appear as a trilogy , but the Harry Potter series, for example, was intended as a seven-part from the start. Sometimes the writers decide to continue after the originally planned end of the plot is published, such as Lian Hearn on The Clan of Otori and Philip Pullman on His Dark Materials . Other series such as the Cliff Country Chronicles by Paul Stewart, which have now grown to eleven volumes, dispense with a continuous storyline and are therefore unlimited in the number of parts.
filming
The spectacular success of the film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter books have stimulated numerous further adaptations. The current boom in fantastic youth films is essentially based on the adaptation of books, the sales of which are also increasing as a result; however, many films have not been able to meet commercial expectations: sequels to Eragon and The Golden Compass are currently unlikely, and the shooting of The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian of Narnia was long on the brink.
Recently, films such as Winter Solstice - The Hunt for the Six Signs of Light and Terry Gilliam's Tideland only saw one DVD exploitation in Germany .
In addition, an adaptation by way of a television film is increasingly being made, which is then often broadcast as a two-parter. Examples of this are The Mists of Avalon and Earthsea - Die Saga von Erdsee (The film adaptation of Earth Sea ), both of which are attributable to high fantasy .
In Germany, there are more and more film adaptations of works of fantastic children's literature: Das Sams , Der Räuber Hotzenplotz , Urmel aus dem Eis and Herr Bello tried to profit from the popularity of the templates.
See also
literature
- Ulf Abraham : Fantastic in literature and film. An introduction for schools and universities. Berlin 2012.
- Wolfgang Biesterfeld: Utopia, Science Fiction, Fantasticism, Fantasy and Fantastic Children's and Youth Literature: Suggestions for Definition. In: Literary and didactic aspects of a fantastic children's and youth literature. Ed. V. Günter Lange u. Wilhelm Steffens. Würzburg 1993, pp. 71-80.
- Maren Bonacker: Escapism, filth and trash? Fantasy as particularly controversial fantastic literature. In: Contributions to youth literature and media 17 (58th year), supplement: Zauberland and ink world: Fantastik in der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur , 2006, pp. 64–70.
- Bartholomäus Figatowski: Where a child has never been before ... - Childhood and youth images in science fiction for young readers , Bonn 2012, ISBN 978-3-929386-35-6 .
- Gerhard Haas , Göte Klingberg, Reinbert Tabbert: Fantastic children's and youth literature. In: Children's and Youth Literature. A manual. Edited by Gerhard Haas. Stuttgart 1984, pp. 267-284.
- Heinrich Kaulen: Tolkien and no end. Current trends in fantastic literature. In: Different Worlds in Series. Ed. V. Roswitha Terlinden u. Hans-Heino Ewers. Tutzingen 2003, pp. 29-52.
- Heinrich Kaulen: Miracles and Reality. On the definition, functional diversity and genre history of fantastic children's and youth literature. In: JuLit , H. 1, 2004, pp. 12-20.
- Tobias Kurwinkel: “'Three up… two across' […] The brick he had touched quivered” - On the metaphor of the threshold in Joanne K. Rowling's Harry Potter. In: Transitions and delimitations in the fantastic. Volume 1. Ed. Christine Lötscher, Petra Schrackmann, Ingrid Tomkowiak. Lit-Verlag: Berlin 2014, pp. 307-315.
- Marco Prestel: Wonderful confusion. An introduction to the theory of fantastic children's and youth literature and the poetics of fantasy. In: Children's literary myths translation. For the construction of fantastic worlds with Tove Jansson, CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. Ed. V. Gunda Mairbäurl, Ingrid Tomkowiak, Ernst Seibert u. Klaus Müller-Wille. Praesens Verlag: Vienna 2013, pp. 25–54, ISBN 978-3-7069-0717-0 .
- Bernhard Rank: Fantasticism in children's and youth literature. In: Contributions to youth literature and media , no. 17 (58th year), supplement: Zauberland and Inkworld: Fantastik in der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur , 2006, pp. 10-25.
- Bernhard Rank: Fantastic children's and youth literature . In: Children's and Youth Literature of the Present. A manual. Ed. V. Günter Lange. Baltmannsweiler 2011, pp. 168-192.
- Reinbert Tabbert: Fantastic children's and youth literature . In: Taschenbuch der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur , Vol. 1: Basics - genres. Ed. V. Günter Lange. Hohengehren 2005, pp. 187-200.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Our authors: Tonke Dragt. In: beltz.de. Retrieved November 22, 2018 .