Mary M. answered • 09/27/19
Lifelong English/TOEFL Tutor Who Caters Learning to Individual's Need
My answers are varied, and the last site mentioned might be the best one about 'Gulliver's Travels being regarded as a children's book'.
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/gullivers-travels-martin-woodside/1102174618#/
shows children's version published recently
ISBN-13: 9781454937098 Publisher: Sterling Publication date: 05/07/2019
Series: Classic Starts® Series Pages: 160 Sales rank: 37,080
Product dimensions: 5.20(w) x 7.30(h) x 0.50(d) Age Range: 7 - 9 Years
https://www.sutori.com/story/the-evolution-of-children-s-literature--xCQgvUgZ5YMqYHy2XqXSjaec
See under 'enlightenment - 1700s' ...The Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Maine and Gulliver's Travels were both adult books which were enjoyed by children.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4977/cc928e74c9fd78fe690368f2b9f890f84356.pdf
The two footnotes by a scholar contain very interesting information about the importance of Gulliver's Travels to Children's literature and, consequently, children who lived in prior centuries (Mary's interpretation of material included here):
I. AFFILIATION TO EXISTING MODELS
Translations of children's literature tend to attach the text to existing models in
the target literature. This phenomenon which is known to us from general
translational procedures (cf., Even-Zohar, 1975, 1978b, Toury 1977, 1980,
1980a), is particularly prominent in the translation of children's literature
because of its simplicity. If the model of the original text does not exist in the
target system, the text is changed by deleting such elements in order to adjust it
to the model which absorbs it in the target literature. This phenomenon used to
I Although children's literature is stratified into two main systems: canonized and non-canonized,
it behaves in many other ways similarly to the non-canonized adult system (Even-Zohar, 1974). From
the historical point of view it uses behavior patterns and models which were prominent in the
canonized adult literature in its earlier stages. The models of children's literature as well as
non-canonized adult literature are frequently secondary models, transformed from adult literature
(Even-Zohar, 1973). Within the system of children's literature this model functions initially as a
primary model and later, after being simplified and reduced, it is transformed into a non-canonized
system (see, for example, Erich Kastner and Enid Blyton). Another point of similarity is the fact that
children's literature as non-canonized adult literature is being stratified according to the division by
subject and reading public and not by genres. Thus there is also in children's literature a division by
sex (boys and girls) and by subject (adventures, detective, school stories, etc.) (see Toury, 1974).
2 Historically speaking, it seems to me that there were other reasons as well for adopting Gulliver's
Travels into the children's system. Soon after Gulliver was first issued in 1726, it was printed as a
chapbook (thus belonging to the canonized and the non-canonized systems of the adult literature at
the same time). Children were probably enthusiastic readers of chapbooks at the time, as they lacked
literature written intentionally for them (Muir, 1969). In such a way, Gulliver became a children's
book before the system of children's literature actually existed, because the book (as well as other
texts) filled a gap in the literary polysystem, which was created by the demand for children's books.
When finally children's literature became an established system, the text of Gulliver had to be
readapted in accordance with the models of the children's system. However, the transfer of the text
from the non-canonized system of the adults to the children's, did not demand a drastic change,
because of the similarity between the prominent models in the two systems.
