children inventing worlds and themselves: considering children’s authorship of narratives

Abstract

This essay discusses the importance of and opportunities for giving value to children’sauthorship of narratives, considering the role that their imagination and experiencesperform in them. The work assumes that narratives have great potential to stimulate theimaginary as it is conceived by Paul Ricoeur, Richard Kearney and Maxine Greene. Thediscussion considers criticism of the notion of authorship as a foundation or property, andconcentrates on the ethical-poetic dimension of authorship, understood as a discursiveproduction in which children explore a highly precise and unique language to inventstories and simultaneously construct themselves as subjects. The article also reflects onsome further proposals for creating narratives with children, based on a ludic anddialogical concept of authorship, in which enter into a free interplay individualimagination, memory and cultural appropriation, an opening to historicity and socialsharing. Finally the discussion about children’s narrative authorship is expanded byconsidering the childhood memories of writers and what inspired them to create storiesas children. This highlights the need to provide a time and space to listen to others as wellas cultural texts that can inspire the creation of stories that can provide to the children theexperience of a great interior adventure.