Teoría e historia de la literatura infantil y juvenil en el Perú: vigencia de las propuestas de Jesús Cabel

The aim of this paper was to validate the relevance of Jesús Cabel’s theoretical proposals. The analysis of his postulates allows us to provide contributions to improve the critical reception of children’s and young people’s literature (CYL). For this purpose, we consider necessary a perspective based on Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology of intellectual and artistic production, and on his analysis of the structure of the literary field. Firstly, we will delve into Cabel’s main proposals (in his dialogue with Hans Robert Jauss’ literary historiography and Roland Barthes’ post-structuralism), and their pros and cons for the contemporary Peruvian CYL. Secondly, based on a comparative reading of four of his works, we will highlight the validity of one of his main proposals regarding the adaptation of the oral tradition to writing. We conclude that for years literary criticism has lacked the tools for a thorough approach to the Peruvian CYL; therefore, we must begin by rescuing and systematizing the few efforts that seek to clarify its problems, such as the case of Jesús Cabel.