Children who lived in the WWII and post-war period, under the occupation of Nazi Germany (1941–1944) and the Soviet Union (1944–1991), had their own assortment of games. Estonia suffered the fate of being on the battlefront twice – in 1941 and 1944. Among the traces of war that inspired children’s games were munitions scattered around the terrain. In 2013, the Estonian Folklore Archives of the Estonian Literary Museum organised a competition for collecting children’s games. In this paper, I examine the accounts about playing with munitions – mainly cartridges found on the terrain and real gunpowder – collected from people born in the period between the late 1920s and late 1940s. From a folkloristic perspective, I study the descriptions of games collected in the competition in two ways. First, I situate them in their historical-cultural context. The use of left-behind munitions for playing was characteristic of WWII as well as the post-war period and mostly typical of boys. The descriptions emphasise spectacular fireworks and loud cracking. The use of various means (e.g. glowing embers by children herding animals) for making loud sounds, but also real gunpowder in toy guns (sussik in Estonian) was also present in the earlier tradition. Although the respondents might not have perceived the risks associated with these activities back when they were children, their descriptions usually also include their adult point of view: these games were very dangerous. Some claim that they were not aware of the risks; others that they were able to assess them well; still others that they were simply foolhardy. The descriptions of games also reveal a certain perplexity – adult respondents are at a loss to explain why they did those things as children. Left-behind munitions could be obtained quite easily, while conventional toys or means for making them were severely lacking at the time. Thus, children played with whatever they could find and the use of munitions diversified the range of toys available to them. Secondly, I interpret the games with left-behind munitions as a type of game that tests the daring and foolhardiness of players. Dangerous games and risky-play games are discussed in several accounts of children’s games. Researchers suggest that playing dangerous games is driven by the will to make sense of risk-taking and responsibility. Child and developmental psychologists find that such games are characteristic of childhood and adolescence, and that playing them is necessary for normal development. Children’s risk-taking behaviour and testing the boundary between the possible and impossible is an integral part of coming of age and self-realisation during adolescence. Yet, development in the preschool age likewise implies testing one’s capabilities and experiencing the feeling of fear. Munitions were novel and fascinating, and enabled children to apply their inventiveness, sense their bravery, and experience excitement. On the other hand, due to frequent injuries and accidents, one could also find exactly the opposite attitudes toward munitions. Thus, for some people who grew up in that era, munitions are associated with games and new toys, but for others, they are associated with pains of loss and tragedy.
This paper is based on the contributions submitted to the 2013 competition of folklore collection organised by the Estonian Folklore Archives of the Estonian Literary Museum, in which people born in the 1940s reminisced about the dolls of their childhood. The contributions to this competition were essentially childhood memories of a specific overarching topic, i.e., the topic of playing and games. In folklore studies, such single-topic descriptions are known as thematic narratives. Thematic narratives are written submissions to a competition or written responses to a survey. I call the thematic narratives collected within this particular competition play memories. The contributions highlight the dialogicity of memories: the personal perspective is intertwined with the perspective of the folklore collector; imagined readers are presented with childhood emotions and biographical information. To analyse the contributions, I thematised the data by looking for similar content elements across the texts and used these to form more general categories. One of the distinctive features of the material collected for the folklore archives in this way is precisely that it conveys personal experiences. The analysis revealed that even though childhood memories are affected by the conceptions of the adult rememberer who has written them down, they can nevertheless shed light on the child’s perspective in the form of vivid memories. Many of the recounted occurrences with dolls can be interpreted as vivid memories that convey some first-time or otherwise significant experiences and the related emotions. The contributions include descriptions of dolls and provide insight into their origins or makers. Much importance is placed on the experiences with one’s own doll or the absence thereof. During the lifetime of those born in the 1940s, the phenomenon of toy ownership began to change. Self-made rag dolls began to be supplemented by store-bought dolls. The toy industry started using plastics, and dolls became cheaper and more readily available. The memories submitted to the competition feature descriptions of receiving a doll, but also stories of yearning for one. The contributors occasionally associate poverty and lack of toys with injustice and wrongdoing. Then again, not all the girls loved to play with dolls or felt a need for them. The contributors also introduce the circumstances of their childhood and tell their imagined readers about their past, thus stepping into the role of a folklorist or a collaborator. In addition to relating personal experiences and personal past, the writers also aim to convey and promote their own “truth”, to further their own “agenda”. The contributions of play memories also discuss the scarcity of toys, often attributing a positive significance to it. The contributors depict themselves as vigorous go-getters who were able to overcome their rough circumstances by creating full-fledged play-worlds from whatever means available. Many find the topic of dolls and doll games important, for memories of one’s dolls constitute an essential part of one’s play memories.
This article examines children’s games in Les Rougon-Macquart while relying on a typology that includes toys, symbolic plays, and a children’s ball. In addition to their educational and recreational functions, childhood games play various narrative roles, such as constructing a referential universe, creating key moments in the plot, exploring the complexity of child and parental psychology, parent/child relationships and much more. Furthermore, the author, Émile Zola, employs toys and children’s games to inform his reflections on the joint influence of heredity and environment on the fates of characters, in alignment with the principles of the naturalist movement. This approach offers valuable insights into how Zola utilizes children’s games as narrative and symbolic elements within his grand literary tapestry.
FR
Cet article analyse les jeux d’enfants dans Les Rougon-Macquart. Il adopte une typologie qui les classe en trois catégories : les jouets, les jeux symboliques et le bal d’enfants. Au-delà de leur fonction éducative et récréative, les jeux pratiqués par les enfants au sein de cette saga littéraire jouent un rôle complexe dans le développement narratif. Ils contribuent à la construction d’un effet de réel, à la création de moments-clés de l’intrigue, à l’exploration de la psychologie des personnages enfants et de leurs parents, à la relation parent/enfant et bien d’autres encore. En outre, l’auteur utilise les jouets et les jeux d’enfants pour nourrir sa réflexion sur l’influence conjointe de l’hérédité et du milieu sur les destins des personnages, en accord avec les principes du mouvement naturaliste. Cette approche offre un éclairage précieux sur la manière dont Zola exploite les jeux d’enfants comme des éléments narratifs et symboliques dans sa grande fresque littéraire.
The aim of this article is to analyse the motif of play appearing in early modern Dutch literature, from the perspective of the humanistic pedagogical ideas. These were humanist educators, such as Erasmus of Rotterdam and Juan Luis Vives, who started to recognize the pedagogical and educational benefits of game playing. The author discusses a manner in which the humanistic pedagogical ideals are reflected in the domain of the didactic literature, propagating ideal patterns of behavior. The paper addresses the mentioned problem by analyzing the phenomenon of play present in the one of the most popular Dutch didactic treatises Marriage (Houwelyck, 1625) of 17th-century poet and moralist Jacob Cats (1577–1660). It turns out that the motif of play presented in the treatise affects different contexts: educational, pedagogical and moral. Furthermore, the poet evaluates the concept of play by making a distinction between good and bad games. This division serves him as a metaphor of an ideal and non-ideal upbringing and parenthood. The analysis also shows that by recognizing the educational benefits of this form of entertainment, play, unless purposeful and useful, raises moral doubts, what, according to Jacob Cats and the mentioned humanist educators, has constituted its existence in the child’s world. Keywords: children’s games, motif of play, early modern period, Dutch literature, early modern literature, didactic literature, Humanism, Reformation, humanistic pedagogical ideas, Jacob Cats, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Juan Luis Vives, Christiaan Huygens.
PL
Celem niniejszego artykułu jest analiza motywu zabawy obecnego we wczesnonowożytnej literaturze niderlandzkiej, z perspektywy humanistycznej myśli pedagogicznej. To właśnie humaniści, jak Erazm z Rotterdamu czy Juan Luis Vives, zaczęli dostrzegać wychowawcze i edukacyjne walory zabawy. Rozważaniom poddano sposób, w jaki humanistyczne idee pedagogiczne znajdują swoje odzwierciedlenie na płaszczyźnie wczesnonowożytnej literatury dydaktycznej, propagującej idealne modele postępowania. W tym celu przeanalizowano fenomen zabawy obecny w jednym z najpoczytniej szych niderlandzkich traktatów dydaktycznych Małżeństwo (Houwelyck, 1625) siedemnastowiecznego poety–moralisty Jacoba Catsa (1577–1660). Okazuje się, że zaprezentowany w traktacie motyw zabawy dotyka różnych kontekstów: edukacyjnego, wychowawczego i moralnego. Sama zabawa została natomiast poddana przez poetę wartościowaniu, poprzez wyróżnienie zabaw dobrych i złych. Podział ten posłużył autorowi jako metafora idealnego i nieidealnego wychowania i rodzicielstwa. Przeprowadzona analiza wykazała również, że dzięki wskazaniu walorów edukacyjnych tej formy rozrywki, zabawa, o ile celowa i pożyteczna, przestała budzić wątpliwości moralne, co, według Jacoba Catsa i omawianych humanistów, konstytuowało jej istnienie w świecie dziecka.
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