Kivits, Alissa
Children’s literature as storytelling: meaning-making around death in a secular context.
Research master thesis, Master Research Master Theologie en Religiewetenschappen.
Abstract
Meaning-making around death is shaped by narratives. Narratives about death which individuals shape for themselves are influenced by grand narratives, and vice versa. In this process, children’s literature has a unique position. Since it stimulates audiences to read stories aloud and discuss them, it is studied as a form of storytelling. Through storytelling, audiences shape their personal meaning-making narrative around death in collaboration with others. In the Netherlands, this process takes place in a secular context. By analysing (1) a recent inspirational policy report about the position of death in the Netherlands, (2) six children’s books about death and (3) four interviews with the authors and illustrators of these books, the relation of storytelling through children’s literature to this secular context is studied. I have found that secularism is connected to a dominant narrative around time, which entails that people have moved away from the authority of religion and towards freedom in using the individual agency in meaning-making. Dutch society and its children’s literature respond to this narrative and reinforce it, but the stories they produce simultaneously prove that in reality, religion and secularism are interwoven in meaning-making around death. The secular narrative of progress towards individual agency needs religion to exist in children’s literature, since people with diverse religions and philosophies are stimulated to use their agency in making meaning through storytelling.
| Type: |
Thesis
(Research master)
|
| Supervisors (RUG): |
|
| Degree programme: |
Master Research Master Theologie en Religiewetenschappen |
| Academic year: |
2021-2022 |
| Date of delivery: |
06 Oct 2022 08:29 |
| Last modified: |
06 Oct 2022 08:29 |
| URI: |
https://rcs.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/703 |
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