Dissertations of Note
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Alderman examines settings in children's novels by major and minor Australian authors to determine the extent to which locale reflects an Australian ethos and the biography of the author who writes about it. She focuses specifically on five patterns in the novels: "setting as a way of life," where "life in a particular locale or . . . cultural or historical milieu" is described; setting as a control over life; setting "as a catalyst of character change . . . usually through an environmental catastrophe"; setting as a metaphoric expression of the relation between people and place; and setting as mythology and tradition, where "traditions and myths concerning the environment" are explored. She finds that the novels reinforce traditional images of Australians and the bush country and stress courage, moral strength, endurance, and love for the land. Moreover, "rural life is viewed as offering a physical and spiritual salvation" not associated with "civilization."
In a content analysis of eleven children's magazines published in 1985 Almerico appraises the image of the elderly and concludes that they are barely represented in terms of numbers, gender, "ethnic/racial composition, financial status, living arrangement, marital status, and occupational status." Nor are they represented in their multiplicity of interests or abilities. Those older people who do appear are generally portrayed in positive roles, but they are also depicted as bland, neutral, uninvolved, or uninteresting. Though not "victims of blatant discrimination," they are condemned to banality and insipidity.
Aspatore emphasizes the "seriousness with which Soviet authorities approach the military-patriotic program" in the Soviet educational system, in children's literature, and among children's presses. She examines the methods used to inculcate a hatred of class and a "willingness to defend the homeland" and finds them generally effective as of 1986. Primary themes are "love of homeland, the Party and youth organizations, Lenin, the Revolution and Civil War, The Great Patriotic War, internationalism (the Soviet View of the world order), and the Soviet Army today," although Aspatore does note numerous articles by Soviet authorities acknowledging some unrest among young people.
Bagnall traces literature for children set in Texas from its inception in 1855 through 1980 and evaluates its "literary, historical, and cultural importance" as regional and national literature. The dissertation is in two parts and contains an analysis and an annotated bibliography of the more than two hundred books that she discovered. Bagnall notes that the majority of the works analyzed have a rural setting, are historical in nature, have "Anglo protagonists," and, perhaps [End Page 219] most important, are "overwhelmingly ordinary," although some books of real merit exist.
The second chapter of Bevan's dissertation treats Alcott's "idealized domestic relations—families learning to conform to a set of internalized cultural relations—undercut by a subversive strand in the adult novels and the thrillers which suggests a feminist view of family relations." Bevan also compares Alcott favorably with James and Hawthorne in her ability to analyze the tautness and unease of nineteenth-century family relationships and struggles. She concludes that "the family ideal is implicit in each writer; the attainment of family harmony and security remains, however, an ideal, rather than an attained actuality." This ideal merits analysis in relation to Alcott's novels for children.
In an appraisal of the treatment of Aleuts, Eskimos, and...
