Kazakhstan children’s literature in the context of world literature: An experience of ‘distant reading’

Abstract

The article, based on the methodology of “distant reading” proposed by F. Moretti, presents the first experience of comprehension of Kazakhstani children’s literature from the perspective of world literature. The relevance of the problem is connected both with the growing interest in the phenomenon of children’s literature, which nowadays includes the areas formerly referred to the “adult” literature (New Young Adult Literature), and with the reconceptualization of the very concept of “world literature” against the background of the emergence of alternative terms, such as Global Literature, and in the context of the later rethinking of the phenomenon of “literature of the peoples of the USSR”. Having distinguished three stages of development of Kazakhstani children’s literature, the authors find in each of them a stable set of features as a cultural national “code endowed with its own implicit systematicity” (M. Espagne): firstly, representation in the texts of the features of the national landscape and, especially, fauna, secondly, orientation to the national folklore and, thirdly, bilingualism. The methodology of “distant reading” made it possible to identify at each of the three stages of development of Kazakhstani children’s literature the author’s names that are most responsible for its attachment to world literature. These names turn out to be for the 19th century. Abai Kunanbaev and Ibrai Altynsarin, for the 20th century: Berdibek Sokpakbaev and Maxim Zverev; for the 21st century: Jan Amanii, Liliya Kalaus and Zira Naurzbaeva.