Abstract

Since the 19th century, British literature addressed to young readers begins to emerge an unusual image of the world, in which, without the intervention of a fantastic element and almost imperceptibly for the reader, different times and eras are harmoniously combined. The crucial technique for creating such a universe is an anachronism, skillfully used by the author and not exposed to him; the latter, in turn, can leave clues for an attentive reader ready to join his “game.” The image of such a space turns out to be consonant with ideas developed in literary studies in recent years, such as the concept of “mythical (nonlinear) time” (M. Nikolaeva), “closed world” (P. Hunt), “palimpsest world” (M. Certeau), etc. The most important locus of such a world in the texts we are considering (Water Babies by Ch. Kingsley, The Wind in the Willows by K. Grahame) turns out to be a noble estate, to denote which we propose to use the term we introduced — “house on the edge of time.” As an additional task, we will analyze the world of W. Maine’s novel Earthfasts (1966), a fantastic “borderland,” which, in our opinion, serves as a development of the image of the Vendale in the tale by Charles Kingsley.

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