Frames for the Body. Spaces and Places in Children’s Literature

Abstract

Over the last forty years, spatiality has attracted increasing academic interest as a means to investigate children’s literature, its history and its underlying theory, both in Italy and abroad. It is a field intersected by exciting pedagogical ideas and categories which are being used to conduct research into children’s literature; they include lived-in space, interior geography, educational materiality, and the building of identity starting from lived spaces. Each of the five essays in this monograph takes its own perspective to investigate the spaces and places of children’s literature, both real and symbolic, as they hang suspended between history and the modern day. The various theoretical approaches and original
interweaving of disciplines reveal the multi-faceted world of children’s literature that orbits around spatiality.

Full text

encyclopaideia XXI (49), 3-7, 2017, ISSN 1590-492X
DOI: 10.6092/issn.1825-8670/7516
3
Introduction | Introduzione
Frames
Frames Frames
Frames for
for for
for the Body. Spaces and Places in Children’s
the Body. Spaces and Places in Children’s the Body. Spaces and Places in Children’s
the Body. Spaces and Places in Children’s
Literature
LiteratureLiterature
Literature
________________________________________________________________________
Marnie Campagnaro
Marnie CampagnaroMarnie Campagnaro
Marnie Campagnaro
Dipartimento di Filosofia, Sociologia, Pedagogia e Psicologia Applicata FISPPA - Università di Padova
ABSTRACT
Over the last forty years, spatiality has attracted increasing academic interest as a means to investigate
children’s literature, its history and its underlying theory, both in Italy and abroad. It is a field
intersected by exciting pedagogical ideas and categories which are being used to conduct research into
children’s literature; they include lived-in space, interior geography, educational materiality, and the
building of identity starting from lived spaces. Each of the five essays in this monograph takes its own
perspective to investigate the spaces and places of children’s literature, both real and symbolic, as they
hang suspended between history and the modern day. The various theoretical approaches and original
interweaving of disciplines reveal the multi-faceted world of children’s literature that orbits around
spatiality.
Keywords
KeywordsKeywords
Keywords: Spatiality – Materiality – Educational places –History and Theory of Children’s literature
Le cornici del corpo. Spazi e luoghi nella Letteratura per l’infanzia
Le cornici del corpo. Spazi e luoghi nella Letteratura per l’infanziaLe cornici del corpo. Spazi e luoghi nella Letteratura per l’infanzia
Le cornici del corpo. Spazi e luoghi nella Letteratura per l’infanzia
Negli ultimi quarant’anni sia in Italia che all’estero la letteratura per l’infanzia ha registrato un crescente
interesse scientifico per il tema della spazialità tanto a livello teorico quanto a livello storiografico.
Intorno a questa tematica si intersecano idee e categorie pedagogiche di grande vitalità per lo studio di
questa disciplina (lo spazio vissuto, le geografie d'interni, la materialità educativa, la costruzione
dell’identità a partire dagli spazi abitati). In questo focus, gli spazi e i luoghi (reali e simbolici) della
letteratura per l’infanzia, sospesi fra storia e contemporaneità, sono indagati da cinque diverse
prospettive, che mettono in evidenza, grazie a differenti approcci teorici ed originali intrecci disciplinari,
l’universo polimorfo della letteratura per l’infanzia intorno al tema della spazialità.
Parole chiave
Parole chiaveParole chiave
Parole chiave: Spazialità – Materialità - Luoghi educativi – Storia e Teoria della Letteratura per
l'infanzia

Marnie Campagnaro
4
In the 1970s, when Einaudi published its first edition of Gianni Rodari’s
Grammatica della
Fantasia
(1973), the Italian writer’s groundbreaking narrative models contributed to reviving
interest in fantasy in children’s literature and beyond. Fantasy became an important and
exciting means to stimulate children’s imagination and creativity, as well as to inject new life
into classroom teaching. Principally, however, it spotlighted the democratic, liberating value
that creative use of the written word can play in childhood. Re-adaptations, hybridisations
and creative revampings of fairy-tales were central to these new ideas. Even more crucial,
however, were children’s bold and impertinent encounters with every-day life, especially that
within the home. In his opening observations on “the wonderful world of home”, Rodari
states that household spaces and their objects are “the stuff of the first observations and
emotions that [children] need to build their vocabulary and use as clues about the world in
which they are growing up” (1973/1997, p. 111). A child’s journey around the home forges
“awareness and fantasy-building, experience and symbolisation” (ibid., p. 110). The 1970s
were also the decade of Armand Frémont, head of the French geographical school of thought;
Frémont was a scholar of “the geography of daily-life” and coined the phrase
éspace vécu
[lived-in space]
(1976). “Place” became the foundation on which the space within human
daily experience was built; it was linked to
a reduced but clearly defined space, but one not without extension: homes, fields, streets, squares. [...]
It brought together small yet tight-knit groups: the same family, the same profession and the same
daily encounters. (Frémont, 1978, p. 95)
Frémont’s vision has much in common with research by humanist geographers such as
Yi-Fu Tuan and Anne Buttimer, who strove to interpret and understand the values, symbols
and meanings that societies have given to or impressed upon the places in which they live.
Analysis switched from how humans experienced “lived-in space” and onto how they saw and
perceived it. Focus was now being placed on the relationships they forged with their
surrounding spaces, including invisible end unexplored ones. According to humanist
geographers,
art in general, and literature in particular, with the evocative way they represent personal geography,
are able to bestow order upon the chaotic way we see and perceive reality. (Lando, 2012, p. 280)
In the 1990s, Emma Beseghi’s “Quaderni di Letteratura per l’infanzia” (1995) gave
form and thought to the question of interior geography in children’s literature. It defined the
role of “story-telling homes”, i.e. homes that

Frames for the Body. Spaces and Places in Children’s Literature
5
provide […] precious information on reality […], contain clues to historical and geographical places,
social classes, status symbols, generational and epochal cycles, family transformations […], ‘states of
mind’. (1995, p. 71)
In 1996, Nuova Italia published
Lo spazio vissuto: luoghi educativi e soggettività
by
pedagogist Vanna Iori, a book which, with great foresight, focused on the role and the
function of spaces-places in educational events. The objective and measurable domains of
physical-geometric space were still present, but beside them now stood the subjective and
lived domain of space, one that changed with state of mind and injected fresh life into
education and teaching. According to Iori, homes, classrooms, squares and cities embody the
way that space becomes educational. The year 1996 also saw Laterza publish a major work
entitled
Storia dell’infanzia,
a stunning historical portrait of how childhood has evolved in
Europe, from ancient Rome to the modern day. It explains children’s relationships with
adults, the role of the family and schools, child labour, social protection networks, play,
science, religion, iconography and literature. This voluminous work emphasises the
importance of spaces in “educational materiality”, be they open or closed, urban or rural,
school or domestic, elite or popular.
In 2016, “International Research in Children’s Literature” published an article by
Cambridge University’s Maria Nikolajeva (2016) in which she reconstructed the
contemporary panorama of research into children’s literature. Her work pinpointed a tangible
change within the approach of contemporary research and she did not hesitate to call it a
“material turn” (p. 133). This return to the body becomes clear on seeing the emergence and
consolidation of the characteristic themes of modern research within children’s literature:
ecocriticism, place-related identity, animals, disability, place-mapping and maps within
children’s books, as well as the physicality of landscape, objects and artefacts, such as dolls’
houses. Nikolajeva’s interpretation confirmed a trend that had already established itself in a
number of countries, including Italy, where a prime example was a 2014 monograph in
“Rivista di storia dell’educazione – RSE”. It was edited by Carmela Covato and devoted to the
past and modern history of educational materiality.
Over the last forty years, spatiality has attracted increasing academic interest as a means
to investigate children’s literature, its history and its underlying theory. A positive move,
indeed. Equally positive is that children’s literature is able to observe and draw from the
thought of other disciplines: some similar, others less so. This is certainly the notion that
transpires from this monograph, which is devoted to the spaces and places, both real and
symbolic, of children’s literature, as they hang suspended between history and the modern
day. Its five essays discuss the aforementioned ideas, tie them to the history and the theory
behind children’s literature, and then put them forward in a stimulating new light, seamlessly
interweaving them with other disciplines.

Marnie Campagnaro
6
The monograph is organised diachronically. It begins with the representations of
domestic settings in classic fairy-tales, which are not as atemporal and ahistorical as
traditionally believed, and culminates with the representations of today’s modern urban
spaces, which attempt to raise children’s awareness of eco-sustainability. The five essays
highlight the wealth of theoretical approaches within children’s literature, from fields such as
historiography, hermeneutics, cognitive narratology and ecocriticism; they also cover means
and sources, including literature, architecture, furniture, human geography, art and outdoor
education, as well as the literary genres which fuel contemporary studies on children’s
literature: from the canonical axis of Basile-Perrault-Grimm to the Golden Age of the late
19th and early 20th centuries classics; and from contemporary novels for young adults to the
visual space of modern picturebooks.
The monograph maps the complex multi-faceted universe of children’s literature
around spatiality, a theme that is proving to be increasingly topical and capable of opening
multiple lines of research.
References
ReferencesReferences
References
Becchi, E., & Julia D. (Eds.) (1996).
Storia dell’infanzia
. 2 voll. Roma-Bari: Laterza.
Beseghi, E. (1995). Interiors: case che parlano, stanze che sussurrano.
L’isola misteriosa.
Quaderni di letteratura per l’infanzia Mondadori
, 1, 57-74.
Covato, C. (Ed.) (2014). Per una storia dei luoghi della materialità educativa. Sezione
monografica.
Rivista di storia dell’educazione
, 1 (1), 5-116.
Frémont, A. (1976).
La Région espace vécu
. Paris: Champs Flammarion.
Frémont, A. (1976/1978).
La regione uno spazio per vivere.
Milano: Franco Angeli.
Iori, V. (1996).
Lo spazio vissuto. Luoghi educativi e soggettività
. Firenze: La Nuova Italia.
Lando, F. (2012), La geografia umanista: un’interpretazione.
Rivista Geografica Italiana
, 119,
259-289.
Nikoleva, M. (2016). Recent Trends in Children’s Literature Research: Return to the Body.
International Research in Children’s Literature
, 9 (2), 132-145.

Frames for the Body. Spaces and Places in Children’s Literature
7
Rodari, G. (1973).
Grammatica della fantasia. Introduzione all’arte di inventare storie
.
Torino: Einaudi.
Rodari, G. (1973/1997).
Grammatica della fantasia. Introduzione all’arte di inventare storie
.
San Dorligo della Valle (Trieste): Edizioni EL.
Marnie Campagnaro
Marnie CampagnaroMarnie Campagnaro
Marnie Campagnaro, Ph.D., is currently lecturer in Children's Literature at the Department
FISPPA, University of Padua. Main research fields include the history and theory of children's
literature, picturebooks, fairy-tales, reading pedagogy and contemporary Italian children’s
writers. In 2017, she hosted the
6th International European Network of Picturebook
Research Conference
.
Contact: marnie.campagnaro@unipd.it