Grotesque and absurd in the literature for children. Correlation of concepts

Abstract

The article considers the poetics of the grotesque and the absurd in the literature for children, in particular, the stories of T. Sobakin (“The Bald Monster”, “Motya”, “Then I Thought”), N. Nosov (“Dreamers”), M. Yessenovsky (“Ur-Yur-vyr”), as well as poems by A. Givargizov (“Unusual”), A. Orlova (“I am growing...”) and A. Usachev (“Vobla and the magazine”). Ideas about the wholeness of images and their harmony towards the created artistic reality are considered key characteristics for both concepts. So, absurd images are created by multiple points of view and contradictions between them, they clearly express the border between the ordinary and the implausible. The elements there are not completely combined and can be separated from each other by the means of imagination. Grotesque images in literature for children, created by objectifying individual elements or combining plans that do not contradict each other, are more natural and can also be visualized, and that is what distinguishes grotesque and absurdity from nonsense. The physicality and the variability of the image remain the most common ways of creating the grotesque in children’s literature. The grotesque and absurd does not depend on the fantastic assumption, which allows such images to exist both inside and outside the category of the fantastic.