역사적 관점에서 본 근대 아동문학 - 프랑스를 중심으로 -

Abstract

For a long time fairy tales that we perceive as children's literaturetoday have not been created and told for children, but for adults. It istrue that ever since Charles Perrault published Contes de ma mère l'oye,numerous works of fairy tales have influenced on the development ofchildren's literature, however, fairy tales, strictly speaking, were notwritten for children. Scholars of children's literature have argued thatthe concepts of ‘children’ or ‘childhood’ did not exist until the 17thcentury. Only in the late 18th century the concept of “children” werewidely accepted as one of the products of the modern world. Historically, it has not been very long since children came to berecognized as individual entities. As childhood is a specifically modernconcept, the development of children’s literature for children becamepossible only by the ‘discovery of children’ in the modern history. Children’s literature was very rare before the 17th Century and thereaders were also very limited. The change in the educational systemenabled a great number of young readers to read and write and variousbooks for children were published after the invention of the printingtechnology. However, the ‘books for children’ in that period werepublished with a view to fulfilling the educational needs of childrenThey were about etiquette, alphabet learning, and basic reading. In orderfor the children's literature in its true modern sense to exist, fundamentalchanges had been requisite in the awareness of individual rights and inthe notion of children, not just the invention of the movable types orthe availability of paper. This paper examines the birth, development, and meaning ofchildren’s literature in France to address the concept of ‘children’ andthe discovery of childhood from a historical perspective. Then, itdiscusses the historical situations and social changes that gave birth tochildren’s literature from the 17th Century. Finally, it delves into theprocess of the birth of modern children’s literature, the publication of‘special’ books for children, and the social needs for children’seducation. In doing so, it aims to clarify how children’s literature haveearned the value as a form of literature.