Comparing Techniques of Authority and Freedom

Clarifying the paradox of authority and freedom is one of the most important concerns of philosophy of children’s literature. The purpose of this paper is to discover and investigate two authors’ view on authority and Freedom in the children’s literature based on the techniques applied in Iranian and English picture-story books. The research is an exploratory and descriptive research. Two picture-story books The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter and I’m a Hungry Mouse, Will Eat You Up by Morteza Khosronejad were chosen for analysis. The analysis showed that both writers have paid attention to the relationship between authority and freedom though their outlooks are different due to historical, social and cultural differences. In Khosronejad’s book there is first freedom while in Potter’s book they are exchanged and work like opposing poles. In both stories the writers use different techniques to give freedom to the child to discover the creative world around him/her in order to facilitate his/her growth. Some of these techniques are: imaginary story line, hidden theme, polyphonic text and picture, intertextuality, metafiction, reversal of situation and shift between reality and imagination.