A3 Refereed book chapter or chapter in a compilation book
Child Adults in Soviet Children’s Literature – Lazar Lagin’s The Old Man Hottabych
Authors: Jenniliisa Salminen
Editors: Jutta Ahlbeck, Päivi Lappalainen, Kati Launis, Kirsi Tuohela
Edition: 1
Publication year: 2017
Book title : Childhood, Literature and Science Fragile Subjects
Series title: Routledge Advances in Sociology
First page : 47
Last page: 58
ISBN: 978-1-13-828240-7
eISBN: 978-1-31-527078-4
Self-archived copy’s web address: https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/27623807
Literary scholar Jenniliisa Salminen investigates
children’s fiction in the Soviet Union, where strict normative limits regulated
how children could be depicted in literature. Child characters were to be
positive heroes, exemplary, and serve as role models for the child reader.
However, character education was undermined by these perfect child characters,
thus authors used different strategies to circumvent this problem. The author
Lazar Lagin, for example, introduced alongside with the protagonist another, a
slightly less perfect character via whom the lesson could be taught. In Starik Hottabych (1938, 1955), Lagin uses an adult character, a three
thousand years old oriental genie that in the text performs the role of the
child in need of education.
Downloadable publication This is an electronic reprint of the original article. |  |
