Abstract
Nina Christensen analyzes how Enlightenment ideas of tolerance and universalism were expressed in eighteenth-century Danish magazines for children. Form and content point to a close relationship between the magazine as a medium, and enlightenment ideas of childhood and Bildung. Magazines were published to educate children to become members of a family, of bourgeois society, and of the nation-state, as well as tolerant citizens of the world. Child readers were addressed as individuals who engaged in discussions with adults, who were able to reflect, and who had a sense of both humor and irony. Readers were taught not to categorize people on the basis of wealth, gender, race, religious belief, or age: of greater importance was whether or not a child or an adult was educated.
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Notes
- 1.
Den danske Skoelemester was published anonymously, but the tone and content, when compared with other publications by the vicar Bendix Krøll, suggest that he may have been the author and editor. Torben Weinreich mentions Johan Christian Schønheyder as another possible author. See Christensen (2012, 156); Weinreich (2006, 76).
- 2.
All translations into English in this chapter are my own.
- 3.
The quotation is translated into English from the Danish translation of August Ludwig von Schlözer’s Vorbereitung zur Weltgeschichte für Kinder (1779).
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Christensen, N. (2017). Imagining Equality: The Emergence of the Ideas of Tolerance, Universalism, and Human Rights in Danish Magazines for Children, 1750–1800. In: O'Sullivan, E., Immel, A. (eds) Imagining Sameness and Difference in Children's Literature. Critical Approaches to Children's Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46169-8_6
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