Imagology Meets Children's Literature

Since the 1970s, children's literature research has developed a number of approaches, from simple ideological criticism to more sophisticated applications of postcolonial theory, to analyse how, and to what end, members of other national, cultural, racial and ethnic groups are represented in texts for children. However, a field of study within comparative literature, imagology, which specifically addresses the cultural construction and literary representation of national characters in literature, has not yet made much impact. This review article will present its origins and methods of investigation as well as sketch areas in children's literature of imagological interest, which have been or are still waiting to be productively addressed, to show what the domain can gain from this approach.