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COMPONENTS OF CHILDSВ’ IMAGE IN LATVIAN AND CANADIAN PROSE OF THE 1900-30S.
Abstract
The aim of the research is to describe childВ’s image as one of the most important components in the structure of childhood narrative. Great significance is attributed in its depiction to charactersВ’ portrait, action and its psychological motivation, age, degree of socialization, and name. Methods of the paper: theoretical and historical analysis of prose texts by bringing together semiotic, comparative, biographical, literary historical methods of literary research. Results of the paper: depiction of the artistic time of childhood in the prose texts of Latvian and Canadian literature is marked by rather stably observed principles. Firstly, diachronic time is predominant, that is typical of the traditional narrative and composition of a literary text showing events and experiences following one another in a sequence. Secondly, the artistic chronotope of the childhood narratives of the 1900-30s is closely related to the category of memory; narration often fits into the cyclical time of nature processes and it is also created in the past form. Besides, the distance between the past and the present is often specially emphasized by the author by inserting into the plot the present viewpoint and reflections on the past, emphasizing the authorВ’s position (Aspazija, A. Brigadere, L. M. Montgomery). However, also in this perspective time is manifested as a subjective phenomenon creating an imaginary picture of the world. Thirdly, great importance is attributed to the time related to childhood as an age period. In the texts of the considered period, disregarding the priorities of any literary trend, the chronological boundaries of childhood are extended from pre-school age to early adolescence (12-13 years of age), and school becomes a point of reference for the change of the childВ’s status. Fourth, especially in the prose texts produced in the 1900-30s childhood, on the one hand, is included in the linear time conception but simultaneously it is subjected to the cyclic rhythm of seasons and the cycle of farm labour. Both seemingly opposite perceptions of the time flow are united in childhood memory narrative.
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