크리티컬 리터러시를 활용한 동화 비판적 읽기교육 —등장인물과 문화모델

Abstract

As a new trend in teaching English literature in college, children’s literature has been incorporated into the English Department’s curriculum. This has stirred up a heated debate on whether children’s literature is appropriate for ‘serious’ literary study. If children’s literature is to be acknowledged as suitable texts for college students alongside great literary works, a new methodology of research and teaching, such as critical literacy, is indispensible for a safe footing in the curriculum. According to critical literacy, texts are written from the perspective of a certain group of people who hold hegemony in society. We are led to accept what is presented in texts as normal, natural, and typical. Such taken-for-granted theories or assumptions about how the world works are called cultural models or Discourse models. Children’s literature, classical fairy tales in particular, contains many examples of cultural models. I demonstrate how cultural models are presented in five classical fairy tales-“Cinderella,” “The Sleeping Beauty,” “Bluebeard,” Pinocchio, “The Ugly Duckling.” In terms of class, all tales except Pinocchio present class divided societies as natural, with the status quo maintained. People of the higher classes are supposed to marry people of the same classes while people of the lower classes are missing from the tales. Race and appearances are of great importance to characters in all of the five tales, exposing their political and social identities. Characters who are widely respected are not only handsome but also young. Interestingly, successful characters look like Western people, thus disparaging Oriental people. In terms of gender, all of the five tales can be used to have children internalize fixed gender roles in society. Especially great emphasis is placed on the importance of a “normal” family in which parents live with their children. In teaching such fairy tales, we need to lead students to find out who are marginalized or missing in terms of class, race (appearance), or gender.