Death in children's literature and cinema, and its translation

Bibliographic Information published by the
Deutsche Nationalbiblio-thek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet
at http://dnb.d-nb.de

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for
at the Library of Congress.

ISSN 1435-4721

ISBN 978-3-631-81437-6 (Print)

E-ISBN 978-3-631-83179-3 (E-PDF)

E-ISBN 978-3-631-83180-9 (EPUB)

E-ISBN 978-3-631-83181-6 (MOBI)

DOI 10.3726/b17389

© Peter Lang GmbH

Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften

Berlin 2020

All rights reserved.

Peter Lang – Berlin · Bern · Bruxelles · New York · Oxford · Warszawa · Wien

All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any
utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without
the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to
prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions,
translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in
electronic retrieval systems.

This publication has been peer reviewed.

www.peterlang.com

About the editors

The Editors
Veljka Ruzicka Kenfel is full professor in German studies at the University of Vigo (Spain). Her publications deal with critical studies of German children’s literature, including literary and audiovisual translations and adaptations into Spanish. She is responsible for the research group “Anglo-German Children’s Literature and its Translation” at the University of Vigo, co-founder of the research association on children’s literature ANILIJ, and co-editor of the journal on children’s literature Anuario de Investigación en Literatura Infantil y Juvenil.

Juliane House is Professor Emerita, Hamburg University, Distinguished Professor Hellenic American University, Honorary Visiting Professor Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and Past President of the International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies. She has published widely on translation, contrastive pragmatics, discourse, politeness and English as a global language.She is co-editor of the journal Contrastive Pragmatics.

About the book

Veljka Ruzicka Kenfel / Juliane House (eds.)

Death in Children’s Literature and Cinema,
and its Translation

This book comprises studies on death in Spanish, British/American and German children’s literature, cinema and audiovisual fiction; several translations from English and German into Spain are analysed. References to death were censored in Spain, as they were omitted or softened not to traumatise young readers. However, in the last twenty years, this taboo theme has been included to enable children and young adults to overcome the loss of a loved one as a necessary part of growing up. Contributions to this book show the historical development of this topic in different films and literary genres following, among others, a fantasy-mythological approach or a realist and objective one, helping children and young adults face death maturely and constructively.

This eBook can be cited

This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.

Introduction

Helena Cortés Gabaudan

The Treatment of Death in German Literature and its Reflection in Early Children’s Literature

María Jesús Barsanti Vigo

Death and its Causes in Current German Literature for Young Readers: Towards a Typology

María José Corvo Sánchez

The Conception of Death in Die Kinder- und Hausmärchen and its Reception in Spanish. A Study of Schneewittchen and Dornröschen

Isabel Mociño González and Eulalia Agrelo Costas

The Topic of Death in Galician Literature for Children and Young Adults

Celia Vázquez García

The Immortality of Death and its Permanent Presence in Children’s Literature

Beatriz Mª Rodríguez and Cayetana Álvarez Raposeiras

Back to Life: Death in Translated 20th Century Children’s Fiction and Film

Lourdes Lorenzo García and Ana Pereira Rodríguez

The Reaper’s Kind Face: Treatment of Death through Dual Addressee (adults/children) Films and their Translations

Introduction

Death, as the subject of a book or film, has always been present throughout the history of literary and audiovisual creation. It has been the subject of philosophical reflections and empirical studies throughout human history in an attempt to explain the existence, or non-existence, of the afterlife. Although it is nothing new in European literature, variations can be found between different countries in terms of the number of published texts. Publications in Germany, Holland and the Nordic countries, for example, greatly outnumber those in Spain and southern Europe. In audiovisual productions, the subject of death has always been of interest to the major distributors such as Walt Disney Pictures, Pixan Animations Studios or Warner Brothers.

However, in literature for children and young adults the topic is touched on far less frequently than in works aimed at adults. This is possibly due to the feeling of fear that a text dealing with the irreversible loss of a loved one can cause in a child, which could result in the young reader experiencing great sadness and pain. According to some academics, the fear of dying or losing someone close is something a child can feel from the age of nine onwards (Spiecker-Verscharen 1982; Hopp 2010). As children mature, their concerns about existential questions, including the significance of death, begin to grow.

There is no doubt that literature can become an important support mechanism not just for young readers but also for parents and educators, helping a child to understand and take on board the concept of death better, to overcome the fears it provokes and to face up to the painful situations that may stem from it.

However, the subject makes only a timid appearance in children’s literature, and despite there being an increasing number of works touching on the topic, it continues to be a taboo in the genre, as Hanán Díaz (1996: 13) states: