Elephant and the child in Russian Literature of the first third of the twentieth century

Abstract

In the article “Elephant and the child in Russian Literature of the first third of the twentieth century”, Valerii Maroshi analyzes the situation “the elephant and the baby” and “the elephant as a child” first of all in the Russian literary modernism and the avant-garde, as well as in the works of N. Zabolotsky and early Soviet Children’s Literature of the 1920s–1930s. In the article, the author problematizes archetypal of a girl and an elephant and pragmatic of the interaction of these two protagonists, which could stand for different symbolic meanings. The situation is considered a story in the form of meeting and communication of the elephant and the girl and as a plot, which suggests a high degree of metaphorization.   Keywords: elephant, child, plot situation, semiosis of the zoosphere, Russian literature