This article examines more than forty metafictional picturebooks and proposes a meaningful typolo... more This article examines more than forty metafictional picturebooks and proposes a meaningful typology based on their narrative features. Unlike adult metafiction, metafictional picturebooks convey self-referentiality on a dual level: the verbal and the pictorial. The article identifies five types of metafictional picturebooks and explores the various ways they complicate narrative games. The metafictional self-begetting picturebook is being crafted as it is being narrated. It often features extradiegetic verbal and visual narrators (narrators outside the story who use linguistic and pictorial elements) with intradiegetic visual narrators (narrators inside the story who use pictorial codes) and employs numerous examples of pictorial metalepsis. The you-book implicates the reader by direct address, deixis, or narrators who stare beyond their books' confines. The second-person address is directed to either a homocommunicative or heterocommunicative narrator. The book about telling and illustrating stories concentrates on narrative engagement, providing metanarrative commentaries on the process of telling or illustrating stories. The metafictional book-within-a-book toys with narrative embeddedness and complicates ontological zones. Meaning is often negotiated in four levels: the visual and verbal narratives of the primary text and the visual and verbal narratives of the sub-text. Finally, metafictional parodies combine the modes of parody with metafiction to comment on existing works of art and invite reconsideration of conventional structures. While most scholarly work on metafiction in children's literature concentrates on individual texts, this study aims to create a theory of metafiction that gathers texts based on their narratological qualities. Whether such books pose philosophical challenges or are meant as pure entertainment for children, they make up the complex web of children's metafiction.
International Research in Children's Literature, 2020
What do Greek children learn about the Turk-Other from children's literature, and how does th... more What do Greek children learn about the Turk-Other from children's literature, and how does this image of the enemy inform their national Self? Has the representation of the Turk-Other remained static or do recent publications demonstrate a change in its portrayal? This article explores such questions in the context of contemporary Greek texts for children and young adults. The image of the Turk-soldier has been and remains overwhelmingly negative. The Turk who represents the Ottoman Empire is the vicious victimiser and ruthless conqueror. The Turk-friend, however, features a more complex conglomeration of attributes, some degrading and others elevating. Fictional histories, that is narratives with a strong inclination towards historical accuracy, are less favourable to the Turk-Other, aiming to preserve a homogenised version of the nation and to justify the deeds of war heroes. These observations persist throughout the twentieth century and do not deviate from the patterns found...
Since parody lies in the eye of the beholder, presupposing the reader's decoding abilities, it co... more Since parody lies in the eye of the beholder, presupposing the reader's decoding abilities, it comes as little surprise that most successful parodic renderings in children's literature are retellings of either fairy tales or nursery rhymes, textual worlds that young readers can immediately identify. David Wiesner's The Three Pigs (2001) and Eugene Trivizas's The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury (1993; henceforth, The Three Little Wolves), are two inventive parodies that expand the potential of the conventional tale and raise a set of intriguing questions for the contemporary reader, whether adult or child. In the English-speaking community of children's literature, Wiesner needs no introduction. He is an eminent artist, author, and illustrator whose critical reception has earned him a long-standing place in the field. Three of his picture books, including The Three Pigs, have received the prestigious Caldecott Medal, and three have received Caldecott Honors. The Three Pigs is referenced regularly in critical readings that examine postmodern tendencies in picture books and is considered to have transformed contemporary practices. Conversely, although Trivizas is a leading children's author in Greece with more than a hundred publications, and although his books have been translated into various languages, only two appear in English, The Three Little Wolves and The Last Black Cat. In fact, The Three Little Wolves was initially published in England and the US, appearing in Greece a year later; therefore, from its inception the book was intended for an international audience. Trivizas resides in England, where, in addition to writing most of his picture books, children's novels, and plays in Greek, he is a professor of criminology at the University of Reading.
While the twentieth century overall witnessed an unprecedented flood of autobiographies and criti... more While the twentieth century overall witnessed an unprecedented flood of autobiographies and critical accounts that validated autobiography as a literary genre, the past 60 years have seen the dominance of self-reflexive writing and the rise of metaautobiographies, that is, autobiographies that employ metafictionality. The conjuncture of autobiography and metafiction stems from their shared inclination towards self-exploration and the implicit manipulation of the writing process. Rien ne vas plus (1991) and Θα ήθελα (2005) take this process a step further: they are metaautobiographical fictions because their character-protagonists reconstruct their biographical record through the act of writing, while their real-fictional lives are recounted in juxtaposition with the fictions that they are crafting. For these protagonists, fiction cannot simply define the self nor write the past but is bound to rewrite both. As their main characters rewrite themselves anew and thus make sense of their vertiginous selves, these two metaautobiographical novels make the reader aware of the process in which experiences are skillfully manipulated to be turned into works of art. Κι όμως υπάρχει κάτι κοινό. Εσύ θέλεις να διαβάσεις μια μικρή ιστορία. Εγώ θέλω να γράψω μια μικρή ιστορία. «Αυτό ήταν», ψιθυρίζω. «Τρελάθηκα». Κι είναι πλέον αδύνατον να κοιτάξω αλλού. Μα αυτό δεν ήλπιζες. Ότι θα σου μιλήσω μέσα απ'τις γραμμές; . . . Οι «Πουέντ» είναι μια ιστορία για την οικογενειακή ζωή. Μπορεί και να σου άρεσε. . . . Θα μου πεις πώς ήταν με τις πουέντ;
Abstract:The article examines works by Eugene Trivizas that manifest themes of power and authorit... more Abstract:The article examines works by Eugene Trivizas that manifest themes of power and authority. The picturebooks chosen for discussion exemplify the subversion of structures in ways that destabilize social and cultural practices and foreground the questioning of adult discourse. For example, in The Braying Donkey, Loukoulos Eats Pebbles, Hara and the Goudoun, and The Flying Saucer, carefree protagonists find themselves bound to impressively higher levels of power which they finally manage to overturn. These texts are read as allegories of subverting hegemony, supplying children-readers with temporary release from adult domination. The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig is read as a parody of ethnocentric narratives that invite the reexamination of ideological and historical codes. Special focus is given to Ignatius and the Cat, a picturebook that toys with the dynamics between authority and children through the metaphors of reading books and the library as an institution. Both images aim to deride adult knowledge and subvert prescribed notions about the virtues of books. Overall, Trivizas's fiction repudiates the imposition of ideas, offering children the critical tools to become active readers.
This article examines more than forty metafictional picturebooks and proposes a meaningful typolo... more This article examines more than forty metafictional picturebooks and proposes a meaningful typology based on their narrative features. Unlike adult metafiction, metafictional picturebooks convey self-referentiality on a dual level: the verbal and the pictorial. The article identifies five types of metafictional picturebooks and explores the various ways they complicate narrative games. The metafictional self-begetting picturebook is being crafted as it is being narrated. It often features extradiegetic verbal and visual narrators (narrators outside the story who use linguistic and pictorial elements) with intradiegetic visual narrators (narrators inside the story who use pictorial codes) and employs numerous examples of pictorial metalepsis. The you-book implicates the reader by direct address, deixis, or narrators who stare beyond their books' confines. The second-person address is directed to either a homocommunicative or heterocommunicative narrator. The book about telling and illustrating stories concentrates on narrative engagement, providing metanarrative commentaries on the process of telling or illustrating stories. The metafictional book-within-a-book toys with narrative embeddedness and complicates ontological zones. Meaning is often negotiated in four levels: the visual and verbal narratives of the primary text and the visual and verbal narratives of the sub-text. Finally, metafictional parodies combine the modes of parody with metafiction to comment on existing works of art and invite reconsideration of conventional structures. While most scholarly work on metafiction in children's literature concentrates on individual texts, this study aims to create a theory of metafiction that gathers texts based on their narratological qualities. Whether such books pose philosophical challenges or are meant as pure entertainment for children, they make up the complex web of children's metafiction.
International Research in Children's Literature, 2020
What do Greek children learn about the Turk-Other from children's literature, and how does th... more What do Greek children learn about the Turk-Other from children's literature, and how does this image of the enemy inform their national Self? Has the representation of the Turk-Other remained static or do recent publications demonstrate a change in its portrayal? This article explores such questions in the context of contemporary Greek texts for children and young adults. The image of the Turk-soldier has been and remains overwhelmingly negative. The Turk who represents the Ottoman Empire is the vicious victimiser and ruthless conqueror. The Turk-friend, however, features a more complex conglomeration of attributes, some degrading and others elevating. Fictional histories, that is narratives with a strong inclination towards historical accuracy, are less favourable to the Turk-Other, aiming to preserve a homogenised version of the nation and to justify the deeds of war heroes. These observations persist throughout the twentieth century and do not deviate from the patterns found...
Since parody lies in the eye of the beholder, presupposing the reader's decoding abilities, it co... more Since parody lies in the eye of the beholder, presupposing the reader's decoding abilities, it comes as little surprise that most successful parodic renderings in children's literature are retellings of either fairy tales or nursery rhymes, textual worlds that young readers can immediately identify. David Wiesner's The Three Pigs (2001) and Eugene Trivizas's The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury (1993; henceforth, The Three Little Wolves), are two inventive parodies that expand the potential of the conventional tale and raise a set of intriguing questions for the contemporary reader, whether adult or child. In the English-speaking community of children's literature, Wiesner needs no introduction. He is an eminent artist, author, and illustrator whose critical reception has earned him a long-standing place in the field. Three of his picture books, including The Three Pigs, have received the prestigious Caldecott Medal, and three have received Caldecott Honors. The Three Pigs is referenced regularly in critical readings that examine postmodern tendencies in picture books and is considered to have transformed contemporary practices. Conversely, although Trivizas is a leading children's author in Greece with more than a hundred publications, and although his books have been translated into various languages, only two appear in English, The Three Little Wolves and The Last Black Cat. In fact, The Three Little Wolves was initially published in England and the US, appearing in Greece a year later; therefore, from its inception the book was intended for an international audience. Trivizas resides in England, where, in addition to writing most of his picture books, children's novels, and plays in Greek, he is a professor of criminology at the University of Reading.
While the twentieth century overall witnessed an unprecedented flood of autobiographies and criti... more While the twentieth century overall witnessed an unprecedented flood of autobiographies and critical accounts that validated autobiography as a literary genre, the past 60 years have seen the dominance of self-reflexive writing and the rise of metaautobiographies, that is, autobiographies that employ metafictionality. The conjuncture of autobiography and metafiction stems from their shared inclination towards self-exploration and the implicit manipulation of the writing process. Rien ne vas plus (1991) and Θα ήθελα (2005) take this process a step further: they are metaautobiographical fictions because their character-protagonists reconstruct their biographical record through the act of writing, while their real-fictional lives are recounted in juxtaposition with the fictions that they are crafting. For these protagonists, fiction cannot simply define the self nor write the past but is bound to rewrite both. As their main characters rewrite themselves anew and thus make sense of their vertiginous selves, these two metaautobiographical novels make the reader aware of the process in which experiences are skillfully manipulated to be turned into works of art. Κι όμως υπάρχει κάτι κοινό. Εσύ θέλεις να διαβάσεις μια μικρή ιστορία. Εγώ θέλω να γράψω μια μικρή ιστορία. «Αυτό ήταν», ψιθυρίζω. «Τρελάθηκα». Κι είναι πλέον αδύνατον να κοιτάξω αλλού. Μα αυτό δεν ήλπιζες. Ότι θα σου μιλήσω μέσα απ'τις γραμμές; . . . Οι «Πουέντ» είναι μια ιστορία για την οικογενειακή ζωή. Μπορεί και να σου άρεσε. . . . Θα μου πεις πώς ήταν με τις πουέντ;
Abstract:The article examines works by Eugene Trivizas that manifest themes of power and authorit... more Abstract:The article examines works by Eugene Trivizas that manifest themes of power and authority. The picturebooks chosen for discussion exemplify the subversion of structures in ways that destabilize social and cultural practices and foreground the questioning of adult discourse. For example, in The Braying Donkey, Loukoulos Eats Pebbles, Hara and the Goudoun, and The Flying Saucer, carefree protagonists find themselves bound to impressively higher levels of power which they finally manage to overturn. These texts are read as allegories of subverting hegemony, supplying children-readers with temporary release from adult domination. The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig is read as a parody of ethnocentric narratives that invite the reexamination of ideological and historical codes. Special focus is given to Ignatius and the Cat, a picturebook that toys with the dynamics between authority and children through the metaphors of reading books and the library as an institution. Both images aim to deride adult knowledge and subvert prescribed notions about the virtues of books. Overall, Trivizas's fiction repudiates the imposition of ideas, offering children the critical tools to become active readers.
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