Heartless Children- Translating children’s literature: Peter Pan in Italy in a diachronic perspective

In the last thirty years scholarly interest in the translation of Children's Literature has increased. Translation Studies and Children's Literature are the fields of study and research at the centre of the present work. Both are almost new disciplines and share a common history as relegated to an inferior status and considered as a part of other disciplines. Thus, this work intends to investigate the situation of Children's Literature in Translation in Italy, taking as case study Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie in a diachronic perspective in order to individuate the translation strategies throughout the time and detect any change of attitude in translating for children. The book focuses on the idea that adult ideology has always tried to shape children's literature in translation according to its main didactic goals. Thus, texts were subjected to manipulations, which resulted, in the end, in a different text than the original. Through a brief history of translation studies and children's literature, the book will examine studies on translations for children, accounting for the the translation of children's books in Italy.