مجله مطالعات ادبیات کودک
سال دوازدهم شماره 1 (پیاپی 23، بهار و تابستان 1400)

The main purpose of this research is to analyze the concept of subjectivity with a problematic approach and to examine its relationship with the critique and theory of child and adolescent literature. Consciousness and action considered as the main features of subjectivity. Thought and act consciously in dialogue with other, requires the assumption of two sides in this regard. I versus you. In interaction of these dualities, one dominates another, and this conquest occurs in a hidden way. Thus, while the consciousness of both sides, because of the accumulation and interaction of their consciousness together, improves, on the other hand, they find a constructed identity, and the weaker side is conquered by dominant discourse hegemony. so, defeated one does not actually think, but it is thought, however, he thinks he is free, he is only chooses among available options. The key concept in understanding of this relationship, is “intersubjectivity” which this paper use Bakhtin’s approach to this term. Intersubjectivity emphasizes the process of this relationship and suggests moving from being to existence in a “useful negotiation”. Attention to the concept of subjectivity and intersubjectivity, has been very challenging in recent years. Since no research has been found about these concepts in Iran, this article deals with it. The main question is how can we improve the relationship between dualities and achive to an intersubjective relationship? At the end, this article, attempt to analyze the duality of the writer and hero, and the process of intersubjectivity between them in Jamshid Khanian’s new book to illustrate the effectiveness of these discussions in the critique of children literature. It seems Khanian have been able to empower his subjects by consciousness and action to create reality within an intersubjective negotiation.

According to some theories on the classification of literary types, literature is divided into branches of "adult literature", "children's literature" and "childish effects", which have an angle of view and thought, but some of its components are childish. This literary genius, called the "Transitional Literature", has been mentioned in terms of "interleaving, the elderly, the boundary, the multilayered, the childish, and the gradual". In the literary genre of the transition, after passing through a layer and entering another layer, Situational and situational situations can be expected unexpectedly or unexpectedly. The last two decades of this genre have been criticized by critics and writers such as Shahram Akbarzadeh, Ali Asgharside Abadi, Peter Hunt, Aden Chambers, Jacqueline Rose and Barbara Wall.The present research is first of all a general critique based on the book of the book on the fiction and narration of Fattah's work of two beautiful stories, "Dani the champion of the universe" as an example of the literature of the frontier, and then with a look A comparative study of the two in terms of the components of this literary genre

Tales form an important part of folk literature and culture. This part of folk culture is a place for the manifestation of beliefs, thoughts, and the common peoples’ way of living in any nation. The tales of any region, especially oral ones, is an appropriate bed for the analysis of mythical beliefs of that nation. In this study, one of the most current tales entitled “Chelgis” in Fars province “Kohmare Sorkhi” has been analyzed. The author, firstly, with field method, has registered the tale as accurately as possible and, then, with descriptive and analytical method, has attended to the mythical motifs of the tale. The findings of the study show that mythical beliefs in all the pivots of the story are, sometimes, obvious and, sometimes, symbolic and enigmatic. The author has attempted to investigate the motifs in the following parts: 1) Izedbanoo-Anahita: investigating the outstanding characteristics of Anahita in this tale a) the goddess of water b) the increaser of herd c) cleanser of women’s uterus and investigating the brutal appearance and prospect of Anahita in the tale as well 2) the support of the magical animal from the hero in the story 3) the magical plants and their supporting the hero 4) the fairies body-transformation 5) body-transformation of man to tree and vice versa 6) the role of trees in women’s fertility 7) the place of the fairies in the tale 8) hair as a tool for fertility 9) the impressive birth of the hero of the story 10) the holiness of numbers

During the course of humankind’s mythological history, we come across many common forms of myths. These mythologies include death, creation, etc.Regardless of the origin of these myths, they share common purposes.As an example, death is considered a result of sin or enmity and while humankind chases after Immortality, he/she turns mortal as a result of sins or a curse from the gods or the evil forces.It is clear that humankind has always feared death.Death, as one of the most important sources of stress, comes in many different forms and Scharer has presented an example of it, the fear of non-existence, through word and image in her book.In her book “Death on the Apple Tree”, considering the common myth of death, the author has made an effort to present a unique point of view on life and death. In this book, death is not the outcome of sins or enmity but only a part of life. In fact, death is life itself, to the point that life is meaningless without death, as death is without life.This research has used analytical-descriptive method to study how death is reflected through text and illustrations in "Death on the Apple Tree" and to point out that the mythological side of death is only one of many representations of death. 

Introuction:

The International Youth Library in Munich in the world’s largest library which holds more than 600000 books in the field of Children’s Literature. In 1949, Jella Lepman founded this library and since then it has managed to promulgate and empower Children’s Literature throughout the world (Lepman, 2002). Every year, lots of publishers and writers around the world send their works to the library to participate in White Ravens' big challenge. The library publishes White Ravens List every year in fifty languages and it includes works like, poetry, novels, picturebooks, and fictions. This list is published based on languages and is arranged alphabetically and for each selected book, there comes an abstract and keywords in English. Being chosen in this list would make publishers and writers known worldwide and furthermore, there are lots of researchers who use these books in their research. Thereby, in this paper, I have studied the concept of empowerment in picturebooks in 2015’s list and in order to make the matter clear, I’ve provided the analysis of three picturebooks from three languages. Having submitted a short overview of empowerment in Children’s Literature and its model, I have brought the degree of empowerment in all the picturebooks selected on the list, in a chart. Afterwards, I have focused on three picturebooks from three languages as examples.
Review of Literature.

I believe that employing empowerment in works written for children and young adults is of essential importance. Children, youth and adults are all members of the society and their empowerment equals the empowerment of the society. This idea alludes to Marah Gubar’s (2013) ‘kinship model’ where she takes children and adults as related and very close to one another. Accordingly the impossibility of Children’s Literature, adults’ power and imperialism in Children’s literature become diluted. Because by diminishing or reducing the difference between children and adults, Children’s Literature writers and mediators can create empowering works to have a share in their empowerment process. This is the main idea behind empowerment in Children’s Literature, in my opinion.  I came across the empowerment theory in sociology while I was working on my MA thesis. Elisheva Sadan (2004) proposes the theory of empowerment for the marginalized people in a society. By getting some ideas from Sadan and adapting them to Children’s Literature, getting some scattered ideas of empowerment from Children’s Literature scholarship, and other empowering concepts, I came upon a model for empowerment in YA fiction in my PhD dissertation. Finally, in order to reduce the overlaps, I used Benjamin Blume’s (1956) categories for improvement of educational goals. Hence, the final model divides empowerment in three categories of affective, cognitive, and psychomotor (Farnia, 2017).

Altogether there are twenty picturebooks in White Ravens list 2015 in three languages (English, French and Perian). After analyzing these twenty books, I have put them in a chart based on their estimated degree of empowerment: excellent, good, fair and poor. Hereby, from among the four Persian picturebooks, three are considered as fair and one as poor; among the ten English books, two are excellent, five, good and two are fair, and finally among the six French picturebooks, one is excellent, three, good and two are fair. Here, in order to illustrate the matter, I’ve chosen three samples from excellent, good and poor examples.   Use Your Imagination, but be Careful what you Wish for! (2015) written and illustrated by Nicola O’Byrne is the English sample. In affective aspect, we see artistic and psychological empowerments. Paratext and intertextuality are rich and creative and are put in artistic empowerment. The optimistic attitude and the happy-ending are psychological empowerment here, as they promulgate a positive ideology. Suspense, unfinished sentences, and foreshadowing intrigue readers affectively. In cognitive aspect, we have psychological empowerment and especially critical thinking, ‘oscillation between centration and decentration’ (Khosronejad 1383Š/2005, 1390Š/2011), gaps, and interpretive illustrations and paratext. Parody, story writing, and some literary elements are put in literary empowerment. In linguistic empowerment we have critical reading, language learning and finally in philosophical empowerment, we have the playful exchange of reality and imagination.The French sample is Tu grimpes drôlement bien aux arbres! (2015) written by Silvia Härri and illustrated by Cristina Pieropan. In affective section, we deal with psycho-philosophical empowerment, in which we see the ideological approach (the optimistic and pessimistic look to life), caring thinking and sympathy. The most important emotions aroused here are loneliness and homesickness. In cognitive aspect, we have psychological and literary empowerments. Similes play important roles in literary empowerment. However, ‘advocating children and youth as fictional characters and addressees’ and ‘useful themes for the addressee’ (Pictcurebook Group at SUCCLS, 1395Š/2016) here moving and loneliness are dominant techniques in psychological empowerments. Child’s emotions are significant in this book and there is no direct ethical message. Of other empowering techniques, we see ‘oscillation between centration and decentration’, gaps and closed-open ending.   The Persian sample, The Sweet Yogurt (1393Š, 2015) is written by Afsaneh Sha’bannejad and illustrated by Sahar Haghgoo. According to the textual and visual narratives and also the theme it seems that this picturebooks has few positive or empowering messages for its implied readers and it might as well lead them to disempowerment. 

By comparing these three picturebooks from empowerment point of view, it seems that the English one makes good use of artistic empowerment and overall, this book is marked as ‘excellent’. The French book has made a good use of a practical theme, and interpretive illustrations and so is taken as ‘good’. However, narrative and illustrations in the Persian sample seem to be cursory and it might even lead to disempowerment. Whatever it be, the main aim of this paper was to study empowerment in 2015’s White Ravens List and put emphasis on the significance of empowerment in Children’s Literature.

Although the trend toward new style storytelling for children and adolescents is on the rise, recognizing the boundaries of narrative in this storytelling area by audience age is an indispensable necessity. This descriptive-analytic study has attempted to represent and analyze the narrative and psychological characteristics of the story, based on the theoretical foundations of narrative and Maria Nikolayova's views on the story world and the three-step process of "scouting, carnival and post-scandal". Childhood to draw the narrative narrative of contemporary children's stories. It can be concluded from the results of this study that the stories of children and adolescents should be categorized and represented according to their cognitive and psychological conditions in the framework of their own narrative structure. Since storytelling at different age levels must be based on the audience's psychological and cognitive status, reaching an active and dynamic audience in fictional literature, especially in adulthood, without the mental and emotional training of the child and adolescent audience. It is not possible to pass the prose stories and then the carnival period, since the three stages of Maria Nikolayova's storytelling reveal that storytelling has an evolutionary process for the child audience (from beginning to adulthood). The training of audiences with the characteristics of these three stages can lead to the expansion of the audience's knowledge and understanding of the story.

Apart from being a means of entertainment and psychological drain, the dramatic works for children serve, on the one hand, as educational tools and, on the other, as a smooth path to pass the legacy of the past (traditions, rites, religion, politics, and the socio-ethical norms of society) over to the consciousness of the current generation, especially when the authors of the works draw on such important structural elements as time, place, plot, characters and, in times, even, the integrity of a story in an intertextual interaction with ancient texts. significant instances are myth and mythical narratives reflected always in various forms including stories, dramas and screenplays. Using Genette’s transtextuality theory, especially hypertextuality, in a descriptive-analytic fashion, the way in which Atosa Shamloo’s drama “Teshtar, the Guardian of Rain” is recreated comes under scrutiny. The most importantly results revealed are as follows: Teshtar, the Guardian of Rain has been fully affected by the “Myth of Rain” in terms of all five types of transtextuality (i.e. intertextuality, arcitextuality, paratextuality, metatextuality and hypertextuality). Intertextuality considered, the author has been mostly under the influence of the Myth of Rain. In other words, she has utilized both imitation and transformation. In Fact, her affectedness and making changes (transformation) in the original in harmony with the mood of audiences have produced a beautiful attractive work for children. In addition, the writer has placed paratextual thresholds within her text making it easier to understand the text when recognized. Doubtlessly, the Myth of Rain has, hence, been a prime pre-text in the production of the work.

The translucent world of myths and different techniques for their narration can be a very valuable for the child and adolescent literature. Using a descriptive method of analyzing qualitative content and with a mythological reading, this article tries to study the divergent techniques in the “Six-Thousand-Year-Old Green Man” novel. By diverging the myths, Kalhor has connected the infrastructure and narrative structure of his work to the modern imagination of the teenagers. He was more interested in the epic of Gilgamesh and, in conjunction with it, the myth of Tamuz and Ishtar. With the creation of a human-plant personality and with the help of diverging several mythical characters. this writer has provided the enjoyment of re-reading many of mythical stories about immortality, mortality, dignity, cultural ancestors of the people (collective wisdom of mankind), the perfect man (mandala), humanity, vegetation and the sanctity of plants, duality, blessing, fertility (Goblins of water, the secret of the immortality with plant, bullock) in a mythical place and time.

A narrative is created only through oppositions hence, the characters and their actions must be studied in terms of binary oppositions in it. The conceptual structures in this study are binary oppositional ones, including the confrontations of good and evil, which can be seen in the whole discourse of Persian literature. In general, one of the most fundamental issues in explaining the similarities and differences between the works of Iranian and non-Iranian authors is the comparison of their conceptual structures, including ‘binary’ and ‘oppositional’ structures. Literary structuralism is a method of analyzing literary texts that are rooted in linguistic studies. Structuralism and its general orientation are based on the analysis of binary oppositions and the relationship between them, and structuralism itself origins from the linguistic studies of Ferdinand de Saussure, and the structuralists have been significantly influenced by his thoughts.

Method, background, and purpose of research:

The method in this research is theoretical, which is either descriptive or analytical. First, books on binary oppositions by structuralist authors have been studied and from which notes have been taken. And then, the biographies of both authors have been reviewed to obtain information about their social, cultural, and political status for analysis. The purpose of this study is to explain the similarities and differences between the binary oppositions in the works of an Iranian and a non-Iranian author basically to find out which oppositions can be universal. There has been no independent research on binary oppositions in children’s and adolescent literature. However, research has been done on binary oppositions in other areas of literature, some of which include:The binary oppositions of war and reconciliation and love and hatred in Ferdowsi's Shahnameh (Razmjooei, Tahan 2016) and the result of this research is that although love and reconciliation are superior to war, its superiority is not ‘absolute’.A study of binary oppositions in Nima Yushij’s ‘Sarivili house’ collection of poems (Mohseni 2014) This study shows that Nima has used binary oppositions to express the most important differences, similarities, and conflicts of his thoughts against those in power.

Binary opposition is an English term. Binary in English means dual. Stars that are placed next to each other in pairs are called binary stars. Of course, the understanding of binary oppositions as the basis of linguistic knowledge was discussed much earlier in the views of Plato and Aristotle. However discussing essence, accident, form, etc. goes back to Aristotle's ideas who himself was the founder of a dualistic view of human knowledge and later influenced literature and other areas. The term was first coined by phonologist Nikolai Trobetsky when he introduced it as the main foundation of a value rooted in cultural history. This term is one of the key concepts in the field of linguistics theories, semiotics, and literary criticism. Roland Barthes believes that semiotics is based on binary oppositions. In literary criticism, this term is one of the fundamental concepts of structuralism and post-structuralism (deconstruction). Jacobson believed that children learn these oppositions in the first place. In his view, the speech’s concentration is generally on binary oppositions, and the difference between consonant and vowel is the most fundamental element of phonology. Structuralism and its general orientation are based on the analysis of binary oppositions and the relationship between them, and structuralism itself is rooted in the linguistic studies of Ferdinand de Saussure, and the structuralists have been significantly influenced by his thoughts. Each text is a set of contrasts that encompass confrontations of good and evil, rich and poor, black and white.

Examining the oppositions and analyzing their relationship in the stories by Houshang Moradi Kermani and Roald Dahl, shows that the common consequence of poverty in Iran and British society is children’s forced labor and also, their confrontation with the realities of life. A child, at an age when he should be enjoying his childhood, is struggling with economic problems, illness, and hunger. In the works of both writers, these poor children’s neighbors or classmates are from the rich class of society. And that creates problems; the children either escape or start to protest against the wealthy class. The use of force, violence and insults by the wealthy is another issue addressed by these two authors. The poor class’s captivity and slavery are among other common themes employed by both authors. There are differences between the binary oppositions in the works by these two authors; In Moradi Kermani's, the poor adults mainly believe in fatalism and superstitions, and the poor children are realistic. While, in Roald Dahl's, the poor adults and children are both realistic.In Moradi Kermani's, the poor are harmless, while in Roald Dahl's, the poor cause harassment.In Moradi Kermani's, the poor are not advocated by the people, while, in Roald Dahl's, the poor have supporters such as doctors or priests.

Imagination in all religious, mythical and literary manifestations has the metaphysical power to create works against deterioration, death and fate. Buoki Maleki (d. 1339) is one of the poets in the field of adolescent poetry in the years following the Islamic Revolution of Iran, whose nature, symbolism, emotion and thought formed the spirit of his poems. Since the poem collection "Behind a Smile" has bipolar (positive and negative) imagery, the purpose of this study is to re-imagine the imaginary forms in the poem collection in accordance with Gilbert's theory using the method. Examine a library and find the answer to this question: Which imaginative system does the most imaginative form of this poem collection belong to? The overall result of the present study indicates that the highest inclination of civic thought in this collection is for the daily system of positively valued imagination, which shows that the poet has largely entered the adolescent world and distorted the image of death in his imagination. Instead he has created imaginative and hopeful images. In sum, the imagery in the collection of poems "Behind a Smile" is as follows: spectacular 36 (39.13%), exotic 23 (25%), dark 18 (19.56) Percentages, 7 (7.60%), 5 (43.43%), and 3 (26.2%) separation morphologies.

The present study first of all discusses the theories of young adult fiction presented by the prominent theorists and critics about the young adult agency in these fictions. Then, it explains and formulates this issue from Roberta Silinger-Trites and Karen Coats’s point of view in the form of conceptual dualities. After that, the paper based on these conceptual dualities, using Mayring Qualitative Content Analysis method, has analyzed The Bean Man Report by Mahdi Rajabi to determine the condition of young adult agency in this fiction. The analysis demonstrates that the agency of young adult subject in the fiction lies in a range between the independent, romantic subject to the constructed, relatively oppressed postmodern subject. In the final part of the story, however, the subject’s main choice containing the conscious thought and action against the other ideological institutions and denial of their importance, is inclined to the romantic thought. So, we can say that the subject agency in this fiction emphasizing on the independency of the subject, is more based on a romantic thought, but given the suspension of the subject at the end of the story and bringing the possibilities like madness or death of the subject to mind, it also underlines the importance of the power institutions, as well as, the death as a biological and inevitable issue. On the other hand, emphasizing on the idea of being there for each other and giving superiority to this idea implies that some kind of generative identity is developed which, of course, requires a breaking-away of society and ignoring it.

One of the central and common concepts in areas such as mysticism, philosophy, psychology, psychoanalysis and postcolonial studies is specifying the status of the paradoxical double-edged marking action – the being-identity and nonexistence – which is the subject of the representation of some literary narratives including fiction written for children and adolescents. The novel, The Emperor of the Words, written for children, is a good example of the aforementioned concept in Persian fiction. The novel utilizes spatial-topographical techniques to represent the concept. In this essay, the representational aspects of the spatial-topographical metaphor have been analyzed with a descriptive, interpretive approach. Findings of the essay show that the author forces the author-narrator of the novel break the boundary of narrative levels from the top to the bottom level and vice versa to create, on the one hand, the being-identity of the subjects and the objects of the narrative with spatial metaphors, working with two dominant symbols: lining and word coinage; and, on the other hand, map the nonexistence and lack of identity with different types of trials, examination, imprisonment, and separation. Meanwhile, the author-narrator of the novel attempt to depict different aspects of ambiguity created by the story agents, blurring the easy interpretation of the signs of the text. These include: erasing the lines, poetic asides, pretending to be mad, state of frenzy, dumb looking, wordlessness, namelessness and mixing narrative levels. These states, however, provide the opportunity of symbolic movement from nonexistence and identity.