Slovenian Children’s Prose between the Imitation of the Actual and the Creation of Possible Worlds

Abstract

This article presents the distinction between realism and fantasy in children’s literature which stems from two different modes of representing the world. Realistic narration usually corresponds to the conventional notions of what is possible or plausible in the knowable, actual world, while fantasy problematizes certain generally accepted notions of (social) reality by creating alternative worlds. I suggest that most children’s prose interweaves both representational principles. In realistic prose, the adult author uses imagination, rebellion, humor and nonsense to identify with the young reader and thus subverts the attempts of the adult authoritative perspective to acquire objective and irrefutable validity. Similarly, fantasy cannot exist without references to the empirically veritable actual world. Thus, my suggestion is to modify the existing binarism into a specter that draws on the concepts of modal realism and possible worlds. The genres that gravitate towards one pole of the specter appear primarily to imitate the actual world, e.g., autobiography, memoirs and historical prose. The genres that incline toward the other pole challenge our knowledge by creating alternative worlds, e.g., fantasy, fairy-tale, nonsense.