Description du projet
La construction de l’âge dans les histoires pour enfants
Comment l’âge est-il construit dans les produits culturels? Les livres de fiction, par exemple, naturalisent souvent les normes de l’âge dans le cadre d’une histoire fascinante. Cette tendance est, à son tour, adoptée dans les contextes éducatifs pour contribuer à l’alphabétisation et au développement social et culturel des enfants. Le projet CAFYR, financé par l’UE, s’intéressera à la fiction destinée aux jeunes lecteurs. Il étudiera l’effet de trois facteurs: l’âge de l’auteur, l’âge du lecteur cible et l’âge du véritable lecteur. CAFYR entend révéler si l’âge et le processus de vieillissement des auteurs pour enfants affectent leur construction des étapes de la vie dans leurs travaux ainsi que la manière dont ils procèdent, et montrer comment différents auteurs croisés écrivent différemment pour les jeunes lecteurs et les adultes. Le projet considérera l’âge des jeunes lecteurs comme un facteur de diversité à part entière et examinera la construction de l’âge des enfants préscolarisés aux adolescents.
Objectif
Constructing Age for Young Readers (CAFYR)
CAFYR starts from the observations that Europe has recently witnessed a few pertinent crises in intergenerational tension, that age norms and ageism frequently go unchecked and that they are part of children’s socialization. It aims at developing pioneering research for understanding how age is constructed in cultural products. CAFYR focuses on fiction for young readers as a discourse that often naturalizes age norms as part of an engaging story and that is endorsed in educational contexts for contributing to children’s literacy, social and cultural development. The effect of three factors on the construction of age in children’s books is studied: the age of the author, the age of the intended reader, and the age of the real reader.
CAFYR aims to lay bare whether and how the age and aging process of children’s authors affect their construction of the life stages in their works. It will show how various crosswriters shape the stages in life differently for young and adult readers. It considers the age of young readers as varied in its own right, and investigates how age is constructed differently for children of different ages, from preschoolers to adolescents. Finally, it brings together readers of various stages in the life course in a reception study that will help understand how real readers construct age, during the reading process and in dialogue with each other. CAFYR also aims to break new theoretical and methodological ground. It offers an interdisciplinary approach that enriches children’s literature research with concepts and theories from age studies. It combines close reading strategies with distant reading and tools developed for digital text analysis. It provides a platform to people of different stages in life, contributing to their awareness about age, and facilitating and investigating dialogues about age, with the aim of ultimately fostering them more.
Champ scientifique
Programme(s)
Thème(s)
Régime de financement
ERC-STG - Starting GrantInstitution d’accueil
2000 Antwerpen
Belgique