History of Adolescent Literature

Presented by: Anna Karina O. Nogueras

II-6

There was a time when little or no distinction was made about the age for which literary works were intended. Few enough people could read anything, so most written works were directed at small minority of educated people.

Oral literature (folklore), which provided a source of entertainment for the mass of people, was necessarily presented to mixed audiences.

With the literacy that accompanied the development of mechanical printing and spread of trade, the audience for writing began differentiated.

By the mid-1700s, a healthy trade “chapbooks”, inexpensively printed, often fantastic adventure stories, entertained young readers. While “respectable” publishers like John Newberry produced didactic and amusing tales for the growing number of literate children.

The historical distinction between adult literature and “children’s literature” is thus at most three centuries old.  “Children’s literature,” however, proved to be too broad a term; early “children’s books” ranged from picture books like Heinrich Hoffmann’s Struwwelpeter, clearly intended to modify the behavior of younger children, to hefty novels like Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, which deals primarily with the adolescent struggles of four sisters and follows them into young womanhood and marriage.

Heinrich Hoffman’s Struwwelpter

Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women

As Western society has had less need for young people to enter the workforce at an early age, and additional education became socially and financially necessary for more people, the period of transition between childhood and adulthood became extended. Thus was created a distinct “adolescent” period.  The primary task for this transitional period is identified as separation from the parents/ family and individuation, or the development of a sense of one’s identity.  The adolescent psychologist Erik Erikson explained that this process caused an “identity crisis” in young people from about the age of 12 until at least 19.

1960-1970Adolescent Literature is born

Differed from earlier works dealing with adolescents.

• Poorer families.• Harsher settings.• Colloquial Language.• Attitude: kids got to see good and bad• Sexual content• Pessimism• Dysfunctional families

1967• The Outsiders, • The House of Tomorrow, • Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones, • Sounder, • Too Bad About the

Haines girl.

1980-1990s

• LESS SHOCK VALUE• MORE ROMANCE & LESS SEX• MORE OPTIMISM• 4 LESS STEREOTYPING• MORE BALANCED VIEW OF PARENTS• MORE VARIED LOOK AT RACISM

Examples are:

“Life may not be the party we hoped for.. But while we are here, we should dance.”