CFP. Issue 26. Geographical space in children’s literature

2024-01-22

We would like to dedicate the 26th issue of Children’s Readings to the theme of geographical space in children’s literature. This choice is driven by our keen interest in exploring natural and fictional geography in literature for children.

Space in literary works has traditionally been a focal point in literary studies, with various works delving into its authorial, genre, and stylistic features. Topoi such as the city, the manor, the village, and the sea have been intensively studied. Another approach involves the study of local texts from regions such as the Caucasus, Siberia, St. Petersburg, and Moscow as objects of cultural geography. However, when applied to children’s literature, both aspects of the study of space remain unexplored.

Travel and exploration of space, both factual and fictional, are fundamental methods of creating narratives for children (e.g., Joachim Heinrich Campe’s Robinson der Jüngere [1792] and Die Entdeckung von Amerika [1787–1788]; Les Aventures de Télémaque, fils d'Ulysse [“The Adventures of Telemachus, Son of Ulysses”] [1747]; Johann Karl Wezel; and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Krusoe [“Robinson Crusoe”] [1780]). Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, adapted for children, spoke of the heroes’ movement into and exploration of unusual spaces.

Emer O’Sullivan identifies two narrative traditions in the early development of children’s literature: adventure stories set in unseen places and fantasy journeys to fictional but spatially plausible worlds. In either case, the depiction of movement in space becomes one of the fundamental techniques in children’s literature.

Gradually, exotic spaces are replaced by recognizable cities and places. In one of the first original Russian children’s books, fifteen-year-old noblewoman Maria Gladkova travels from Moscow to St. Petersburg (1810). Over the next century, literature for children explored more and more fragments of the actual geographical space of the Russian Empire. This trend is mirrored in European children’s literature. However, until the Second World War, accurate localization of the place of action in children’s books remained conventional.

Jane Suzanne Carroll notes an increased interest in geography in children’s literature after the Second World War, attributing it to the growing public interest in landscape studies, transport, and tourism. She suggests (somewhat controversially) that space is central to children’s literature in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

 For the 26th issue of Children’s Readings, we propose discussing primarily (but not exclusively) the following set of questions:

 

  • The intersection of children’s literature and cultural geography: How is the space of children’s literary texts geographically marked? What elements constitute the landscape’s structure? How does geographical localization relate to the representation of domestic, alien, sacred, and frontier space?

  • Is the geographical marking of places evolving in children’s literature? Metropolitan and non-metropolitan cities? Provinces and the countryside? How is the same place portrayed in different literary traditions and styles? Enlightenment? Realist? Postmodern? Does the depiction of place in children’s books change over time? How have literary maps, travelogues, and landscape images evolved?

  • How is actual geography in demand in different periods and genres? Which countries and cities are mapped in children’s books? How are the borders between nations, regions, and other territorial groupings drawn in children’s literature? Is the border concept problematized in certain social situations?

  • What does topographical analysis bring to the study of children’s literature? How are toponyms represented in children’s books? How are geographical maps used in children’s books as support and play material?

  • How does geography in children’s books participate in the ideological construction of the image of the world?

  • How is space used to record the relationship of time? Which geographical and broader spatial objects carry the function of memory?

  • Do the geographical markers in children’s literature vary across cultures and languages? Do geographical spaces and landscapes, sets of geographic objects, and traditions of linguistic object labeling differ?

  • How and for what purposes are landscapes exoticized? To what extent and in what ways does children’s literature become a tool of colonial/anticolonial narratives?

  • How is space represented in metaphysical journeys and time travel? How is fictional geography arranged in children’s literature? How are maps of nonexistent terrain depicted in works of literature? How are toponyms and localities invented by fantasy authors? How do imaginary spaces relate to real ones? How do writers mark the boundary between fiction and fact in the representation of place?

 

In addition to articles submitted for the main block of the magazine, we welcome submissions for the following sections: Reviews, Archives, and Interviews

Recommended length of main articles: up to 40,000 characters

Submission deadline: July 15, 2024.

The deadline for submission of the final version of the article after the double-blind review process is September 30.

Submissions can be emailed to the editorial board at detskie.chtenia@gmail.com.

 

This issue is scheduled to appear in December 2024.

 

We appreciate your cooperation.

 

DCh Editorial Board