Story Papers as Cultural Artefacts: Contexts and Content

Abstract

In what ways can a detailed exploration of the physicality of the story papers, their paratextual elements (cover, illustration, advertising, editors’ columns and so on), help to frame an understanding of the stories themselves and the ways in which children interpreted and used them? And might a more macro-scale view of the story paper as artefact help in building a picture of child readers and their reading lives, and open up further the discussion of embedded ideologies? This chapter draws on the concepts of cultural production, cultural/social use-values and symbolic capital (see Bourdieu, 1993) and also looks at the changing space and place of reading, exploring story paper production in social and historical context. In the first part of the chapter we will focus on these broad cultural contexts and values. The second part explores texts and paratexts (Genette, 1997), and draws on concepts from reader response and cultural theory (Iser, 2000; Williams, 1961, 1977) as well as from marketing and advertising theories.