Literature for children and violence in a minority literature: The case of basque literature

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the presence of various forms of violence and situations of conflict in contemporary Basque literature. We focus specifically on the limited prominence that the Basque political conflict and the terrorism of ETA have in the works of contemporary Basque authors. For this purpose, we start with a brief introduction to the characteristics of children's literature written in Basque and to the evolution of its literary system. Questions having to do with the ethical function of literature in a politically violent environment, and with the narrative strategies used to express them serve to introduce a number of narrative works which have dealt with this topic in the last decade of the last century and the first decade of the present century.