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Children’s Literature and Nation Building: The Basque Case

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Abstract

The Basque Country is a stateless nation located in the western part of the Pyrenees, divided between France and Spain. The romanticist nationalist trend that emerged in Europe throughout the nineteenth century gave rise to a nationalist feeling in the Basque Country that has been fed, among others, by children’s literature. Children’s literature written in Basque throughout the twentieth century in many cases had a clear educational intentionality. The need to create a Basque community, a tradition and customs of their own during Francoism resulted in the production of a literature with a clear nationalist profile. Nevertheless, the political change after the end of the Franco dictatorship, with greater freedom and autonomy for the Basque Country, gave rise to a literary production in which those aesthetic values prevail. A literature that, from the local perspective, encompasses universal subjects in which emphasizing the specificities of the Basque is no longer necessary, as today it aims to present individual and universal conflicts.

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Acknowledgment

The authors of this paper belong to the Research Group IT 1012/16, supported by the Basque Government.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Education and Sport, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Juan Ibañez de Santo Domingo, 1, 01006, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain

    Xabier Etxaniz Erle & Jose Manuel López Gaseni

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  1. Xabier Etxaniz Erle
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  2. Jose Manuel López Gaseni
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jose Manuel López Gaseni.

Additional information

Xabier Etxaniz Erle (Oñati, Basque Contry, Spain, 1961) is a Senior Lecturer of the University of the Basque Contry (UPV/EHU), in the Faculty of Education and Sport at the campus of Vitoria-Gasteiz, where he has been teaching Children’s Literature since 1984. He has written several books for children and he has published many papers on the subject of children’s literature—more specifically Basque children’s literature—on journals and magazines such as CLIJ, Behinola, Revista de Psicodidáctica, Nour Voulons Lire!, Cauce, Tantak, Boletín Galego de Literatura and Ínsula.

Jose Manuel López Gaseni (Bilbao, Basque Contry, Spain, 1961) is a Senior Lecturer of the University of the Basque Contry (UPV/EHU), in the Faculty of Education and Sport at the campus of Vitoria-Gasteiz. His main area of research is the relationship between children and young people’s literature and literary translation. He has authored several books on these subjects and he has also contributed several articles to journals and magazines such as Jakin, Senez, Behinola, Revista de Psicodidáctica, Tantak, Anuario de investigación en literatura infantil y juvenil, Ínsula and others.

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Etxaniz Erle, X., López Gaseni, J.M. Children’s Literature and Nation Building: The Basque Case. Child Lit Educ 50, 240–260 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-017-9320-z

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