The article at hand tackles the subversive play of Kaytek the Wizard’s character and the constructions of childhood in the prose of Janusz Korczak. The novel, Kajtuś Czarodziej (Kaytek the Wizard) serves as the source material for an analysis which shows childhood in the convention of a ‘world upside-down’ – the typical carnivalized vision of the world found in literature dedicated to young people. In such literature, the carnival is associated with the motif of having ‘great fun’ which is a marker of children’s folklore and subculture. However – and this is something atypical for Polish children’s prose – Korczak’s novel includes a motif of subversive play during which a child overturns and deconstructs the reality governed by the social rules determined and enforced by adults. Such a form of play is revolutionary by its very nature and the child-character becomes somewhat demagogic. A consequence is that he is capable of perverting or denaturalizing the usual order, and grotesquely implementing a reversed one. In the novel explored, the subversive play of Janusz Korczak’s child-character fits into a carnivalesque paradigm of childhood and may be illustrative of ‘dark paidocracy’.
W artykule omawiam trylogię autobiograficzną José Mauro de Vasconcelosa: Moje drzewko pomarańczowe, Rozpalmy słońce i Na rozstajach. Utwory te postrzegane mogą być jako powieści fantazmatyczne dla dzieci i młodzieży, gdzie wspomnienia z dzieciństwa zostały przez pisarza obudowane fantazmatami, które kreował jako dziecko. Istotny jest tu sposób prezentowania dzieciństwa z perspektywy dziecka jako podmiotu wyobrażającego, stającego się dzieciństwem bogatym w obrazy o proweniencji baśniowej. Odczytanie znaczenia tych wyobrażeń pozwala podkreślić ich katartyczny charakter. Dziecięce przeżywanie momentów granicznych osadzone jest tutaj celowo w sferze kompensacyjnych projekcji. W swej prozie autobiograficznej Vasconcelos odtwarza zatem nie tylko zdarzenia, które go ukształtowały, ale przede wszystkim sferę dziecięcych fantazmatów jako przykład magicznego myślenia dziecka o sobie i świecie, skłaniającego go do ważnych, czasami jednak tragicznych refleksji.
EN
The article discusses a trilogy of the author’s autobiographical works encompassing My sweet orange tree, Let’s light the sun up and At the crossroads. These works can be seen as phantasmal stories for children and youth, which are based on author’s memories from childhood, significantly embedded in phantasmata that he has created as a child. An important feature is presenting childhood from the perspective of a child who becomes the imagining subject. This image of a childhood thus becomes rich in depictions stemming from fairy tales. Deciphering meanings of these depictions allows to underscore their cathartic character. The child’s experiences of transitional moments is here purposefully embedded in the sphere of compensatory projections. It is in his autobiographical prose that Vasconcelos therefore not only recreates the events that has shaped them, but first and foremost explores the sphere of children’s phantasm as an example of child’s magical thinking about the world and the self. These thoughts direct a child towards significant, though often tragic reflections.
The article entitled Childhood subversions and infantilizations of adulthood in the literature and films personality horror based on selected examples is focused on “carnal horrors” revolving around the subject of serial killers and the source of their psychopathy. Taking into account the findings of the horror researchers and creators, among others Carol J. Clover, the origins of psychopathy in personality horrors are most likely to be found in the murderer’s traumatic childhood. For Clover, childhood marked by trauma should be referred to as “subversive” and can as such become an interpretative tool consciously chosen by the writer and desired by the reader. The selected personality horrors present varying versions of subversive childhood which always – as claimed by Clover – results in the process of “infantilizing” one’s adulthood. Such infantilizing manifests itself in deviations, aberrations and crimes committed by the protagonist – called here a “pop-psychopath” – that are directly related to the childhood trauma. A pop-psychopath’s infantilism induces horror and abomination as it points to its permanent rooting in the childhood experience composed of the worst deviations. It is worth mentioning that personality horror does not aspire to be a scientific study of psycho-pathology of serial killings but rather offers only a cursory treatment of psychiatry and psychology findings on the subject. It should be noted that, similarly to other genres of horror literature, the personality horror is a type of “game with fear” discussed by Roger Caillois. This is linked to the fact that it satisfies a human need to experience fear in a grotesque, gruesome and ludic manner, emphasising such justifications for a crime as are expected by the horror fans. One of such justifications is a killer’s toxic childhood and their extremely infantile attitude that is a natural effect of the experience. This is the issue I intend to focus on, interpreting the most popular literary and film texts on the subject.
The article Are There Monsters in Dorota Wieczorek’s Strachopolis? analyzes selected elements of the topos of fear in the aponymous IBBY-awarded children’s novel. The author is interested in the contemporary version of the topoi of fear embedded in the landscape of globalized existence affected by the phenomenon of supermarketization and consumerism. In the article, the topic of fear highlighted by Wieczorek, is reinterpreted through the prism of a number of sociological theories, notably, Marc Augé’s concept of non-places, Zygmunt Bauman’s postmodern construct of “liquid life”, and Jeffrey J. Cohen’s cultural theory of monster. In Wieczorek’s novel, “monster” is a social metaphor for the excluded whom Bauman has called homo sacer. Their societal degradation in the fairy-tale futuristic metropolis is conditioned upon the post-panopticon power, exercised as persecution of the “Other’s” ethnic and gender identity. The excluded are thus outsiders, if not the discarded “social pariahs”. Besides presenting the sociological and cultural theme of the monstrum, the article further discusses the strategy of carnivalization put forward by Bachtin. This shift leads to the victory of the Others-Monsters as subjects within the liquid modernity. It makes the novel intriguing both on the textual and didactic plane.
Conversation with Katarzyna Slany over her book Groza w literaturze dziecięcej. Od Grimmów do Gaimana (The Gothic in Children Literature. From Grimms to Gaiman).
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