Fremdbegegnungen und Alteritätserfahrungen in psychologischen Adoleszenzromanen

In intercultural literary studies, alterity is both a formal and thematical concept. The formal aspect entails the aesthetic qualities of the text, whereas the thematic aspect encompasses everyday, structural, extraordinary, or radical facets of the Alien. This paper offers a close-reading analysis of the portrayal of alterity and its multidimensional character on the example of selected figures from contemporary German-language children’s and youth literature. In addition to that, the paper shows how specific characters critically reflect upon their own defamatory prejudice and transform it into transcultural understanding.