Children's poetry. Features and differences from adult poetry (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject German Studies - Genres, grade: 2, University of Bremen, language: English, abstract: This paper deals with the characteristics and properties of children's poetry, especially in distinction to adult poetry. The idea to work out this topic arose in a lecture in which the question was raised whether the poem "Es führt dich meilenweit von dannen" by Friedrich Schiller, taken from a book of poems for children, was actually a children's poem. In this work, it should become clear which characteristics indicate that a poem belongs to children's poetry, or is suitable for children. At the beginning of the paper, I define the concept of poetry, especially children's poetry. I briefly discuss how difficult it is to find characteristic features that describe only children's poetry and explain why children's poetry is nevertheless a separate area of lyric poetry.

I give an overview of structures and elements frequently used in children's poetry in Chapter 2, and sample poems for individual characteristics are included in the appendix. In chapter 3 I explain the difference between children's and adult poetry. For this purpose, I compare a children's poem and an adult poem. In chapter 4, I deal specifically with the child reader and describe which factors, in addition to the structure of the text, play a role so that a child understands the content of a poem. In particular, I describe the problems that children have in reading the above poem "Es führt dich meilenweit von dannen".