Reconstruction of the Image of the Child in the Literature of the New Period: Comparison of British and New World Literature

Abstract

The article focuses on the reconstruction and comparison of a gallery of child images in the literature of the New World and Great Britain in the late 19th and early 21st centuries. The child character is considered not only an artistic device but also an essential sociocultural marker that reflects social problems, traumatic experiences, and the peculiarities of the formation of national self-identification. The methodological basis of the study is a combination of comparative, postcolonial, and typological approaches. Moreover, close reading and distant reading literary strategies were used because they allowed the detailed consideration of 28 works (14 British and 14 from New World literature). Therefore, it was easy to identify the recurrent typological structures. The results showed significant variation in the archetype distributions of child images across British and New World literature. The British corpus is dominated by the archetype of the “child-innocence” (52%), while New World literature is dominated by the image of the “child-martyr” (38%). Rarer archetypes were also identified – “child-collective memory” and “child-nation” - which reflect historical and cultural characteristics and national experiences. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the comprehensive comparative analysis of two literary corpora, which were previously considered either separately or exclusively in a synchronous aspect. The results obtained may be helpful to literary scholars and lecturers for deepening their understanding of cultural memory and studying world literature and culture. This will help strengthen awareness of one's own national identity through the prism of literary narratives.