La perception de l'Autre dans les romans de Michèle Marineau et Kit Pearson

Abstract

This thesis deals with questions of social, cultural and gender identity in the context of cross-cultural issues that arise out of novels that Michèle Marineau and Kit Pearson have written for adolescents. The characters in the novels are migrants, and the content is driven by conflict that arises out of the meeting of different cultures. The conceptual framework of the thesis uses the following questions: Where is the border in these novels between"us" and"them"? How are children and adolescents from other cultures represented? In which way does the politics of racism and sexism interact with language? How do these novels take into account a migrant reader? What narrative strategies do the authors use? To answer these questions, the thesis combines a range of approaches to proceed in interdisciplinary fashion, drawing on history, anthropology, ethnic studies, and pedagogy to study the issue of identity. The thesis gains insight into the ways in which identities are constructed and represented in children's and juvenile novels and discusses the novels' representations in order to deconstruct stereotypes and prejudices.