Chapter 8
Playful reading
Transnational interactions between books, toys, and other
media in Northern Europe around 1830
This chapter concerns the transnational character
of children’s literary culture across media and genres in Danish and
German homes around 1830. Furthermore, it addresses the interaction
between reading and playing in and around books. German author Karl
Blumauer’s Der kleine Robert und sein Steckenpferd
(Little Robert and his Hobby
Horse, 1833, Danish translation 1835) is the prism used
to view the interaction between the market for illustrated books in
Denmark and Germany; concepts of childhood and literature presented
in the German and Danish prefaces; the ludic and media culture
represented in texts and images; the traces of use in
specific copies, and literary and ludic practices. The
chapter concludes that, taken together, such combinations of sources
allow a fuller insight into transnational aspects of childhood,
children’s expected and actual use of children’s books, toy and
media, and the book as a commodity that afforded playful as well as
readerly uses.
Article outline
- Children’s use of books in transnational contexts
- Illustrated books in Germany and Denmark
- Addressing German and Danish readers: Medium and paratexts
- Reading, playing, and entertainment culture in and around the
narrative
- Reading and ludic culture in practice in Denmark around
1840
- Conclusion
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Notes
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References