Style ("a quarterly journal of aesthetics, poetics, stylistics, and
interpretation") invites submissions for a special issue on “Conventions of
Children’sLiterature: Then and Now.” Essays should focus on the aesthetic, stylistic, and
poetic conventions that characterize children’s literature as a genre. For
instance, there have been radical shifts in narrative technique, methods of
characterization, picture book conventions, linguistic style, and thematic
elements in just the past ten years, as children's literature has "discovered"
postmodernism. Postmodern picture book artists such as Eric Carle, David Diaz,
Anthony Browne, and Chris Van Allsburg take their cues from the likes of Klee,
Roualt, Chagall, Munsch, and Magritte in creating a visual world for children
very different from the bucolic scenes of earlier illustrators; however, the
borrowing, transforming, and renewing of aesthetic conventions works both ways.
It can be argued that modernist and postmodernist writers for adults are
indebted for their literary experimentation to the works of children's writers
of the nineteenth century. New evidence also suggests that the conventions of
certain medieval texts indicate that they were written with a child audience in
mind. Contributors are thus invited to explore the conventions of character,
narrative, language, and/or genre in either comparative or singular ways across
a range of time periods. Send essays (6,000-9,000 words in length) by 31 March
2001 to Karen Coats, 4240 English Department, Illinois State University,
Normal, IL 61790-4240. Inquiries may be addressed to kscoat2@ilstu.edu.
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CFP@english.upenn.edu
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http://www.english.upenn.edu/CFP/
or write Erika Lin: elin@english.upenn.edu
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