Children’s Literature Research in Greece: The Situation Today

Officially born in 1836 with the publication of the children’s magazine Pediki Apothiki (Children’s Storeroom), Greek children’s literature developed toward the end of the nineteenth century and matured in the post–World War II years. Today, encompassing all possible genres and styles, and containing unique narrative, thematic, and illustrative innovations, this literature has been recognized and awarded both nationally¹ and internationally.²

Until the 1950s, as a result of the limited production of Greek children’s literature, critical interest was restrained and confined to folkloric or educational analyses. The gradual appearance of newspaper articles focusing on the subject and a short study entitled Provlimata Pedikis Logotechnias (Problems of Children’s Literature) by Haris Sakellariou in the 1960s signaled that things were about to change. As children’s literature production increased, critical interest grew alongside it, thus stimulating research and raising discussion to new levels.

The first research conducted in the field was born out of educational and social interests. This is understandable if one takes into account the fact that the initial creation of a literature exclusively for children appeared at a crucial time in modern Greek history—shortly after Greece gained its national independence in 1829—and was directly linked to the state’s and intellectual community’s interest in the child, its education, and socialization. These priorities, along with moral and ethical didacticism and the triptych “homeland, religion and family,” were reflected and visibly embedded in children’s narratives. Consequently, scholarship mainly centered its attention on the quality and didactic characteristics of the books and often drew on the assumption that a good book is one that is enjoyed equally by children and by adults. A position voiced by internationally award-winning Swedish children’s literature author, Selma Lagerlöf, this principle had a loyal following from both international and Greek children’s literature authors and scholars of the time. Gregorios Xenopoulos, a pioneer of Greek children’s literature, strongly advocated that children should be given books that are first enjoyed by adults and emphasized that this should be a general rule to be followed during the process of literary creation (Sakellariou, Istoria tis Pedikis 19). Although significantly “watered down,” this direction of interest in children’s literature is still evident in contemporary research as well as compilations and publications of reading lists for educators and parents (similar in content to many books published in the West) proposing “good, quality books for children” along with criteria for their evaluation and selection.

University Study and Research

The role of children’s literature as a medium of instruction continues to be a key factor of importance, and this is evident in that children’s literature is not offered for study in any university departments of literature or foreign languages but only in those of education. Children’s literature became part of the university curriculum in 1987³ and has been studied since then in preschool and primary school education departments of central and regional universities at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Here, children’s literature is offered as an obligatory course as well as an elective. In the core modules, the areas that are focused upon are those related to the use of children’s literature in education, for example, teaching children’s literature in school; teaching the Greek language and history with the aid of literary texts; criteria for evaluating children’s books; the relation between the child and the book; and so on.

Despite the emphasis on its educational importance, a growing number of universities are recognizing the importance of the social, historical, and literary attributes of children’s literature and are considering these aspects in their introductions to the subject within the context of their educational degrees. In such cases, the history of Greek children’s literature, its creators and their works, and trends and types of children’s books are given attention. Furthermore, literature for children may be studied in relation to that for adults in order to tease out the respective similarities and differences. Consequently, the literary elements (that is, theme, structure, characters, plot, style, tone, mood...