The master’s thesis defines hermeneutic narrative ethics as a framework for understanding the ethical dimension of literature and its pedagogical potential, which enables the development of ethical sensitivity, empathy, and critical literacy in children and adolescents. It proceeds from the premise that a story is not merely an aesthetic form but an ethical event that opens up a space for reflection on oneself, the other, and the world. Using two stylistically and generically different literary works – the picture book The Mišmaš Bakery by Svetlana Makarovič and the comic Ratman by Tomaž Lavrič – as case studies, the thesis examines how marginal characters, the symbolic roles of mice and rats, spatial metaphors (bread and the sewer), and narrative strategies and structures establish a starting point for the development of ethical imagination and for reflection on responsibility, otherness, and the possibilities of a good life without unequivocal authorities or explicit moral lessons. The hermeneutic concepts of Paul Ricoeur, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Richard Kearney, Hanna Meretoja, and Søren Kierkegaard illuminate literature as an ethical orientation that is realized in the formation of narrative identity, the fusion of horizons between text and reader, the relation to the Other, the cultivation of a sense of the possible, and the existential either-or decision. Through the hermeneutic and comparative analysis of the selected works and through the proposed pedagogical approaches, the master’s thesis outlines a model of ethically oriented teaching of literature in which readers enter the story as co-creators of meaning and, through dialogue, identification, and interpretation, learn a respectful and open understanding of the complexity of the literary text and of the world.
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