Representations of the Ugly in Contemporary Children’s Literature

Abstract

To examine the ways recent children’s narratives that are in accordance with multicultural perspectives represent the aesthetic category of ugliness in relation to the concept of difference, this article analyzes eight Brazilian children’s books from 2008 to 2010. Based on the field of Cultural Studies as its theoretical foundation, the article presents the medieval aesthetic theory of Thomas Aquinas as an example of a philosophical system that is still capable of acting on the production of subjectivities and identities until the present day. A key finding of this article is that multiculturalism has a strong influence on the ways differences are represented in
contemporary children’s books.