Frames for the Body. Spaces and Places in Children’s Literature

Abstract

Over the last forty years, spatiality has attracted increasing academic interest as a means to investigate children’s literature, its history and its underlying theory, both in Italy and abroad. It is a field intersected by exciting pedagogical ideas and categories which are being used to conduct research into children’s literature; they include lived-in space, interior geography, educational materiality, and the building of identity starting from lived spaces. Each of the five essays in this monograph takes its own perspective to investigate the spaces and places of children’s literature, both real and symbolic, as they hang suspended between history and the modern day. The various theoretical approaches and original interweaving of disciplines reveal the multi-faceted world of children’s literature that orbits around spatiality.