The Topos "Animals in the City": Interpreting Kornei Chukovsky’s "The Crocodile"

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the topos of "animals in the civilized space (city, house)", which functions as moral, social or historiosophical allegory in religious, didactic, and other types of narratives. In Kornei Chukovsky’s fairytale poem "The Crocodile", this topos has several functions within the text simultaneously, manifesting as condemnational, utopian, and advisory themes. All these themes are presented to the reader as both serious and a parody at the same time. This duality could be explained through the genre specificity of the children’s poem, and it assists in a better understanding of this text.

Keywords: Russian literature of the 20th century, literature for children, topics, Kornei Chukovsky, animals in the literature