Kenneth Grahame

Este artículo pretende analizar cómo la figura del dragón del relato infantil "The Reluctant Dragon" (1898), del inglés Kenneth Grahame, se aparta de sus concepciones negativas de los géneros medievales del romance y la hagiografía desde una caracterización humanizada, expresada tanto en el uso refinado del lenguaje como en la tendencia a la afectación, al espectáculo y a la paz. Este perfil de la criatura condicionará las decisiones del resto de los protagonistas, el Niño y San Jorge, ante las expectativas de los pueblerinos, que anhelan presenciar un duelo entre el caballero y el dragón como una diversión desprovista de la complejidad de sus sentidos originales. El desarrollo de este conflicto y su pacífica resolución permiten interpretar este cuento como una reescritura con matices humorísticos de la leyenda de San Jorge y el dragón, que reinventa los arquetipos de ambos y que cuestiona los estereotipos malignos y benignos asociados tradicionalmente a cada uno a través de personajes con voluntad e intereses propios.

Palabras clave: dragón, arquetipos, estereotipos, caracterización

Kenneth Grahame, John Steptoe, Jenny Offill and Nancy Carpenter: these and other Anglo-American children’s writers craft fictions in which pedagogical efforts to delimit what others think or do prove toothless. What degree of directiveness toward others is ethically permissible or morally obligatory? By posing without resolving this question, these authors adopt a critically ambivalent stance toward paternalism that is not only in line with contemporary philosophical accounts of this concept, but also helpful for rethinking how we theorize about critical pedagogy and student agency.

Robert Ingpen has written and/or illustrated over 100 books, including newly illustrated editions of classics such as "A Christmas Carol", "The Wind in the Willows", "Peter Pan and Wendy", and "The Jungle Book". In 1986 he was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Medal for Illustration, for having “made a lasting contribution to children’s literature”. Robert studied at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, and had an early career as an artist with CSIRO. He later began illustrating books, and his illustrations for Colin Thiele’s "Storm Boy" won the first Visual Arts Board award for children’s book illustration.

This interview was conducted shortly after the publication of Ingpen's illustrated edition of "The Wizard of Oz".

Reviews: The Annotated Wind in the Willows. Ed. Annie Gauger. NY: Norton, 2009. The Wind in the Willows: An Annotated Edition. Ed. Seth Lerer. Cambridge: Harvard, 2009. The Illustrators of The Wind in the Willows. By Carolyn Hares-Stryker. Jefferson: McFarland, 2009.

Nel 2010 Michele Mari pubblica il romanzo "Rosso Floyd", una storia dei Pink Floyd rielaborata liberamente e arricchita dall'influenza della mitologia fantastica che accomuna tutte le opere dell'autore lombardo. L'articolo si propone di fornire al lettore una guida alla lettura del romanzo, partendo in particolare da un'interpretazione del personaggio di Syd Barrett basata su alcuni saggi di Mari. Si tenta inoltre un'analisi della portata intermediale del racconto, cercando i riferimenti non solo alla discografia e filmografia del gruppo inglese, ma anche alle ossessioni letterarie e cinematografiche di Mari.

The 92nd issue of the French peer-reviewed journal Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens (CVE) will address the question of talking to children in Victorian and Edwardian children’s books.
[Please download the full CfP!]

This issue will thus examine the question of how children are talked to, and consequently ascribed a specific place and role in the conversation. Attention can be paid to characters, whether they are children or child stand-ins, narratees, implied and real-life readers.

Avenues of inquiry for this issue include (but are not limited to):
• the conversational geneses of 19th-century children’s books and their impact on the narrative structures and/or the role of the child reader
• the role and place of conversations with children in 19th-century children’s books
• the conversational relationship between child or adult narrators and child narratees
• the narrative and stylistic strategies to enhance / restrain child agency
• adult-led conversations and children’s responses
• the issue of child narrators
Please send abstracts (no longer than 400 words) with a short bio-bibliographical notice (no longer than 50 words) by January 10, 2019, to Virginie Iché (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, France):
virginie.iche@univ-montp3.fr
Notifications of acceptance will be sent by February 15, 2019. Full articles will be due by June 20, 2019. Proposals in English or French will be considered.

The full CfP can also be read online:
• https://victorianist.wordpress.com/2018/09/27/call-for-papers-dear-child-talking-to-children-in-victorian-and-edwardian-childrens-books/
• https://www.navsa.org/2018/09/26/cfpdear-child-1-10-2019-6-20-2019/
• http://www.irscl.com/news/?p=1200
• https://www.fabula.org/actualites/dear-child-talking-to-children-in-victorian-and-edwardian-children-s-books_87097.php
• https://emma.www.univ-montp3.fr/fr/ressources/ressources-sp%C3%A9cifiques/%E2%80%9Cdear-child%E2%80%9D-talking-children-victorian-and

Wszystkie drogi na mapie Grahame’owskiej Arkadii prowadzą do domu, bowiem dom – przestrzeń przyjazna, swojska i zaciszna – znajduje się w centrum świata opowieści, który jednocześnie został przez pisarza pomyślany jako świat iście angielski, zawierający w sobie esencję i sedno wyobrażenia o angielskiej tożsamości. Dom z opowieści Grahame’a to prawdziwy „raj na ziemi”, to przestrzeń przytulna i doskonale urządzona, mieszcząca w sobie „wszystko, co potrzebne”: kominek z trzaskającym ogniem, lampę rzucającą mleczne światło na znajomy, wygodny fotel, kredens i spiżarnię. Nikt, tak jak pisarze angielscy, nie potrafił chyba oddać dyskretnego uroku i urody domowego zacisza, nikt też, tak jak oni, nie celebruje w literaturze myślenia o domu, który zajmuje w zbiorowym imaginarium miejsce centralne. Dom jest żywą istotą, posiadającą niepowtarzalną duszę; jest przestrzenią bezpieczną i oswojoną, całym światem „zamkniętym w czterech ścianach, odgrodzonym od ogromnej, srogiej Natury”, a także najistotniejszym punktem na każdej mapie, gdyż to od niego zaczyna się, ale i w nim szczęśliwie się kończy, każda – nawet największa – przygoda. Celem artykułu jest przybliżenie literackich reprezentacjoi przestrzeni domowej w klasycznej angielskiej opowieści dla dziecij, jaką jest "The Wind in the Willows" Kennetha Grahame’a, ze zwróceniem szczególnej uwagi na kontekst biograficzny i graficzny powieści.

Dragons and other creatures of the imagination were frowned upon by the European Enlightenment with its focus on rational thought and empirical evidence. For decades they slumbered in archives and libraries or stole away to live in the literature of the common people – in folk tales, chapbooks, and street ballads. From the mid-eighteenth century onwards, though, so-called Volkspoesie or folk literature garnered new interest. In the 1790s German romanticists re-discovered the appeal of the architecture and literature of the Middle Ages, while at the same time the British upper-class remodelled their homes in the gothic style and put fake medieval ruins into their gardens. In the nineteenth century this gothic revival became a powerful torrent that affected many areas of culture and society, especially in Britain. It not only led to a re-evaluation of medieval literature, but also to a processing of themes and motifs from medieval romances, fairy tales, and local legends in nineteenth-century art and literature.

One narrative pattern which has remained popular with authors and artists since the Middle Ages, in spite of the Enlightenment's general disdain for imaginary creatures, is the heroic dragonslayer story. It appears not only in medieval literature, but also in neo-chivalric romances, in folk literature, fantasy fiction and popular romance, among others. As my study will make apparent, the story of the dragonslayer has undergone significant transformations, many of which are connected to major social and cultural changes that took place within the last 400 years. Especially in regard to gender roles, the dragonslayer story can serve as an example of how art and literature mirror social actualities of their times.