As Crônicas de Nárnia: análise das representações de infâncias em O Cavalo e seu Menino (1954)

Abstract

Is the childhood presented by Clive Staples Lewis predominantly marked by childish traits or by traits of adultization? With this guiding question, the general objective was defined as investigating the fictional relations of childhood in the work The Horse and His Boy (1954) regarding the social role of the child. As specific objectives, we listed: a) to discuss how childhood was understood in the 19th century and what social role the child played in society; b) to analyze how classic narratives and children's literature represent childhood; and c) to compare the constructions of childhood represented by Aravis, Lasaralina, Corin, and Shasta. The work The Horse and His Boy (1954) is the fifth volume of the series called The Chronicles of Narnia by Lewis, in which the research object is found: Aravis, Lasaralina, Corin, and Shasta. These characters play ambiguous roles that distance themselves from the child context. Given this, in the theoretical foundation, we discussed the perception of the child subject throughout the centuries based on Áries (1978) and Papalia and Feldman (2012). Regarding the emergence of pedagogy and children's and youth literature, we used as theoretical support: Palo and Oliveira (1986), Hunt (2010), Gregorin Filho (2010), Colomer (2017), Zilberman and Magalhães (1982), and Nikolajeva (2023). Regarding the study and analysis of the writer Lewis, McGrath (2022) and Morais (2022) are used. Throughout the character analyses, the degree of child protagonism conveyed through the characters' discourses and the degree of empowerment of the children are considered. In this study, we categorized the characters into three divisions: adult protagonism, child protagonism marked by traits of adultization, and adult protagonism marked by traits of infantilization. Regarding empowerment, children are considered in three orders: the narrator's view, the view of other characters, and the child by herself. The result of the research shows the predominance of adultization regarding child characters who present few child traits.