Imagologie, kinderliterarische Komparatistik und Digital Humanities – mögliche Synergien

Abstract

This chapter probes potential synergies between comparative children’s literature, imagology and digital humanities by discussing two research projects with an imagological focus. The first is a diachronic study of British children’s fiction with a German theme published between 1870 and 1990, which traces the interdependence of political and cultural relations between the two nations asking, for instance, how the depiction and valorisation of German characters in narratives with a specific time setting varied according to their dates of publication. The second, current, project examines images of nations, cultures and ethnic groups in picturebooks from a double perspective: it investigates the mental images of such groups formed by the imagination and how these are represented in the material images of the picturebook. The chapter asks whether or rather how these projects might profit – or have profited – from the new possibilities offered by digital technology. It concludes with a critical appraisal of what digital humanities currently has to offer, but also what it cannot yet accomplish, pointing out that hermeneutic and interpretative processes are still indispensable in order to identify and engage with specifically literary devices such as rhetorical devices, schemes and tropes.