An Analysis of Three Stories from the Series Little Nicholas Based on the Theory of "Reader Within the Text" by Eden Chambers

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Department of Persian Language and Literature, Payam Noor University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Eden Chambers' theory of the reader within the text, as one of the most prominent theories in the field of children's and adolescent literary criticism, seeks to examine the level of effort and success of the author in each work. In recognition of children and teenagers as readers and between the pages of the book, and in order to understand the reader hidden in the text and his characteristics, Chambers considers it necessary to pay attention to each work and analyze it based on four components: style, point of view, favoritism, and ex-pressive gaps. One of the most prominent children's story book series in recent years, which has been translated and published many times, is the collection of stories Little Nicholas written by the French writer René Gossini. The present study, with a descriptive-analytical approach and by presenting examples from the French text, examines three volumes of this collection of stories: " Little Nicolas and Friends ", "Little Nicolas and the Break Time" and " Little Nicolas Gets into Trouble", which consist of 45 stories. Consequently, among the four processes of the mentioned theory, two elements of "favorism" and "style", due to the unique power of the author in humor, the technique of concrete characterization, favoring the world of childhood, and benefiting from simple words, are respectively more colorful. As a result, the first person "point of view", which leads to the production of the same language and vocabulary structures and stability in tone and integrity throughout the stories, in addition to the element of "narrative gaps", which makes the audience follow the texts by raising questions in their minds,  induce consistency in the engagement with the story and discovering answers.

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References

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Research in Contemporary World Literature
Volume 28, Issue 1
August 2023
Pages 245-270

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