ABSTRACT
Comparative literature is concerned with the study of literature and literary theory and criticism in an international context and with literary texts in relation to other media and disciplines; it is dedicated to ‘the cross-cultural and interdisciplinary study of literature and culture’. The founding father of comparative children’s literature is Paul Hazard, the leading French comparatist, who with Les Livres, les enfants et les hommes published a study of children’s literature in 1932, a time when children’s literature hardly existed for mainstream academic criticism. Comparative children’s literature concerns itself with general theoretical issues in children’s literature, especially questions pertaining to the system itself, its particular structure of communication, and the social, economic and cultural conditions which have to prevail in order for a children’s literature to develop. Furthermore, comparative children’s literature addresses all relevant intercultural phenomena, such as contact and transfer between literatures, and the representation of self-images and images of other cultures in the literature of a given language.
