Different gender roles in youth literature, especially the role of a girl, are considered in this thesis.
In the theoretical part, the definition of young adult literature and the fairy tale as an important pedagogic tool is considered. Stereotypes and stereotypical gender roles are highlighted and later linked with their occurance in literature.
In the second part of the thesis, an interpretation of modern young adult literary works is made. The goal was to find the motive behind the role of girls in such literature, whilst considering the description and the outline of a girl as a main literary character. In order to consider high quality literature, literary works in this part were selected from a manual for reading quality youth books, which is published annually by the Ljubljana City Library. Six literary works with a girl as the main literary character were interpreted using spreadsheets. Based on description and outline the main literary character was determined as either modern, traditional or a combination between modern and traditional.
In three out of six considered literary works the main literary character was defined as modern, two were defined as traditional and one was defined as a mixture between modern and traditional. A surprising fact, which was discovered while defining the literary character is that the authors of all three literary works, where the main literary character was classified as modern, are male.
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