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Lecture series: The inexpressible in children's literature

at 18 KM
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Children's literature still suffers from a certain depreciation, because it is considered naive and parasitized by images. It is then called "paraliterary", defined as less stylistically demanding and not very qualitative at the narrative level. However, children's literature is experiencing an ever increasing success, which alone should invite us to reconsider its importance in the individual and cultural training of young readers, that is to say both young children, to whom books are read and shown, that teenagers are keen on fantasy series.

It will therefore first be a question of identifying the ambiguous field (N. Prince, The children's literature in question (s), PUR, 2009) of children's literature, by going beyond the prejudices which regularly distance it from the world academic. Secondly, an additional ambiguity will be questioned through the notion of the inexpressible: a number of works in children's literature question the facts of societies from which we instinctively want to protect children because of the gravity and violence they express.

When does the inexpressible start? Is it when we cannot find the words in front of a reality which exceeds us or when we ignore what should be said? In contrast to the "unspeakable happiness" which strikes Rimbaud, it will be a question of the multiple forms which the inexpressible takes in youth literature in connection with current subjects and facts whose complexity and harshness seem to constitute an obstacle to their apprehension. by children or adolescents

Sébastian Thiltges is a doctor of comparative literature. He is currently working at the Institute of Luxembourgish Language and Literature at the University of Luxembourg, where his research focuses on literary didactics as well as on the relationships between ecology and literature.

Tonia Raus is an assistant professor in French literature and language and their didactics (MENJE discharge) at the Institute for Romance Studies, Media and the Arts at the University of Luxembourg. Her research, in didactics of literature, focuses in particular on the challenges of literature in the disciplinary configuration and awareness of French in Luxembourg.

Conference of the cycle "The inexpressible in children's literature"