Centrum Badań Literatury dla Dzieci i Młodzieży na Wydziale Filologicznym Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego zaprasza na kolejny wykład z cyklu „International Voices in Children’s Literature Studies”.
Wykład pt. From Metaphorical to Literal Door-openings in Children’s Literature wygłosi w języku angielskim prof. Virginie Iché (Université Paul Valéry – Montpellier III).
Wykład odbędzie się 24 października 2022 r. o godz. 18.00 za pośrednictwem platformy MS Teams. Wszystkich zainteresowanych udziałem w wykładzie prosimy o kontakt z dr hab. Justyną Deszcz-Tryhubczak, prof. UWr., pod adresem justyna.deszcz-tryhubczak@uwr.edu.pl.
Streszczenie w języku angielskim
Children’s literature has famously been described as “windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange,” and sometimes also “sliding glass doors” that readers have to “walk through in imagination” (Bishop ix). In other words, children’s literature is often depicted as potentially metaphorically opening doors for their readers, i.e., opening up vistas and broadening horizons. For this lecture, I will pay attention to picturebooks with literal door-openings: Haunted House by Jan Pieńkowski, Jane Walmsley and Tor Lokvig (1979), Knock Knock Who’s There? (1985) by Sally Grindley and Anthony Browne, Shhh! by Sally Grindley and Peter Utton (1991), Postman Bear (2000) by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, Doors by Roxie Munro (2004) and What’s Next Door? by Nicola O’Byrne (2017). I will examine the various strategies implemented to get child readers to open (paper) doors—whether by focusing on the book-as-object with its flaps, door-like pages and cut-out pages, or by working on the book-as-discourse with, in particular, the use of direct addresses to the flesh-and-blood reader. I will contend that door-openings in picturebooks help child readers achieve three main goals: (1) to become an experienced liseur, to take up French scholar Michel Picard’s terminology, who finds pleasure in the page-turning event, (2) to discover how accessible and enjoyable the world of fiction can be and thereby become lu, and (3) to become a lectant, aware, namely, of the key-role of the page break in the economy of the picturebook. Literal door-openings in children’s books thus open up large metaphorical horizons for their child readers, that include emergent literacy, pleasure reading and forms of agency.