Study On Chinese Doctoral Dissertations Of Children’s Literature

As a special field, the independence of the discipline in children’s literature becomes more and more obvious. The degree theses on children’s literature, especially doctoral dissertations, are important achievement and development in children’s literature discipline. So, it is significant to study children’s literature doctoral dissertations, to grasp the children’s literature research direction and discipline system. However, there is not enough research on this academic achievement.This thesis tries to read, analysis and integrate the doctoral dissertations of children’s literature, and makes a comprehensive analysis to the theories and criticisms in the doctoral dissertation, from the background of contemporary children’s literature theory and criticism, with the deep awareness of questions. We try to find the key problems, explain the difficulty, outline the research panorama, look for the gaps in the study, give suggestions, and make out a further clear position of children’s literature on the basis of existing study results in this field. Then, maybe we can grasp the whole construction of children’s literature.The introduction part mainly introduces the background and source of the topic, including a train of thought and method of the research.The paper is divided into five chapters, which depends on the main achievements and the content characterizations of existing doctoral dissertations.Chapter1is basic theory study. Doctoral dissertations discuss it from three aspects—the view on children, the relationship between childhood and children’s literature and the esthetics characteristics of children’s literature. At the same time, researchers put forward some new concepts and arguments, such as "plural childhood"," national childhood","image of childhood,""discourse power","educating adult","charm of lightness,""the criticism of aesthetic education", which grasp the innate character of children’s literature deeply around the particularity of children’s literature. While there are also some repeated researches.Chapter2is history development study. Doctoral dissertations observes modern process of children’s literature at initial stage, occurring stage and the modern period; track development of regional children’s literature from the development of minority (Uighur and Mongolian mainly) children’s literature and the development of Hong Kong children’s literature; explore how to form the classic works from the classical series, classic cases, and the interaction between children’s literature with Chinese and literature education. It seems that the focus is very overall, but there is still much blank in research.Chapter3is style study. It mainly involves three parts:fantasy style, including tales, fantasy literature, fables, science fictions; children’s novel study, including growth novels and ecological novels; multimedia style, including picture books, children’s films and children’s plays. However, there is almost no research on poetry, prose, and scientific literature.Chapter4is comparative study. What doctoral dissertation study on this part focus on fairy tales and novels, especially on Grimm’s fairy tales and Andersen’s fairy tales. The focus on foreign novels is European and American novels. There are some studies on fables and literature images. Compared with internal study, the researchers still need more world vision. The style, case studies and theory of comparative study are required to further broaden and deepen.Chapter5is application study. This is a weak part in doctoral dissertations, which mainly focuses on the study of publication and teaching. The former includes investigation of contemporary children’s literature study on publishing view, and the historical development of children’s periodicals in modern times. The latter pays attention to the curriculum resources and the teaching practice. The diversity research on this part is insufficient.The part of conclusion is reflection and summary, discussing study significance and academic blank, putting forward the direction and possibility of further research studying.