The author of the study, María Remedios Sánchez, maintains that “in the XVIII and XIX centuries the aim is essentially didactic and moralizing to instruct a public who was being taught to read and write.” According to María Remedios Sánchez, at the moment there is a child literature specifically written for this sector, but what children and young people read has does not need to be written specifically for them.
María Remedios Sánchez analyses in this research work (published in the journal of philological studies Elvira, edited by the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Granada and the Women´s Institute) a tale by Juan Valera (1824-1905), El caballero del azor, starting of what we understand by youthful literature, a different concept from that of the XIX century, and intends to prove that this text is a valid –and actual– model of that kind of literature.
“El caballero del azor” recounts determinant events in Plácido´s youth, a boy who is being educated with other noble young men in a Benedictine abbey and who charecterizes by his goodness and patience.
The concept of youthful literature –according to María Remedios Sánchez—starts to work from the XVIII century and takes shape in the XIX, with literacy campaigns that start in this historic moment, but in a sense different from the current one. María Remedios Sánchez quotes María Isabel Borda Crespo, who suggested: “At the beggining these books were considered as an educative instrument, but because of the huge child consumption of popular collections of novels, legends and tales aimed at a general audience, books were published specifically for their leisure time, although the moral function played an essential part in them.”
Reference: María Remedios Sánchez.
PhD student of the University of Granada.
Journal of Philological Studies. University of Granada.
Phone number: 619 801714.
