Friday 20 December 2013

ABC blog: bonus post Ä

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 Ä is for äldre which means ”older”, and it is used in Swedish in the phrase äldre barnlitteratur, older children's literature. But what is older? Older than what? I must admit that it took me a long time to get interested in older children's literature, and I still tend to be more involved with ”new” or ”contemporary” which doesn't make much sense either because my contemporary begins in the 1970s and '80s which for most of my students is ancient. I believe that for many children's litrature colleagues older means 17th and 18th century, but I don't know much about it, and it's too late for me to start learning more. The subject here in Cambridge that fascinates me is Medieval and Modern Languages, which, from a children's literature perspective is unfathomable. Which just shows how complex such simple labels as “old” and “new” can be.

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