Religious Stories in Children Literature
Comparative Study of Arabic and American Literature
Keywords:
children literature, Arabic children stories, American children stories, form and technique in children stories.Abstract
Religious stories exist in all cultures and literatures, and its presence is not confined to Arabic Islamic culture or to Arab children literature. This is the motivation behind the current study which adopts a comparative approach, which would reveal the technical differences in addressing this genre. This current paper tackles two themes: 1) presenting examples of religious stories addressed to children from Arabic and American literature, 2) undertaking a comparative study that addresses the technical characteristics of religious literary genre.
The study has shown the huge amount of stories addressed to American children of different child age groups. In contrast, the study reveals limited corresponding Arabic literary production addressed to the intermediate age group (6-9), and near absence of works for early childhood (1-5). It was also revealed that the American writer has no constraints in employing his/her imagination in the religious stories, while the Arab writer is fully committed to the religious text, with few exceptions who have overcome this problem. The study has also shown the huge gap between the level of Arabic and American religious stories in respect to form and technique.
