Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Bertills, Yvonne Gunilla

Titel

Beyond identification: Proper names in children's literature

Ort / Verlag

ProQuest Dissertations Publishing

Erscheinungsjahr

2003

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• My dissertation examines names of literary characters in children's literature. The analysis considers the names of the characters in three culturally different sets of texts in closer detail: Tove Jansson's Moomin novels (1945–1970), Mauri Kunnas's Koiramäki picturebooks (1980–1988) and A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928). The names in the corpus are considered through general onomastic, semantic as well as narrative perspectives; the analysis discusses the formation/selection, the contents and the functions of the names in comparison with the criteria and considerations of proper names in general. The translations of the names in the materials are also dealt with. My study approaches the names from an interdisciplinary point of view: it sets off from a theoretical consideration of proper names in general language use as well as the consideration of fictive names in literary contexts in general. The main aim of the study is to clarify how the specifics of children's literature affect name formation and name use, and in particular the characteristics of the dichotomy child-adult and knowledge of language. As the focus of the study is on children's literature, the dichotomy child-adult and the way it affects the formation and use of names, and in turn, language use, is taken into particular consideration throughout the study. The focus is on linguistic, and in particular semantic aspects, of the names. My study shows that although the criteria of name formation/selection and name use vary largely according to language culture, genre and literary purposes, there are several points of contact between the names in my materials.