Children’s literature and human-canine culture: Transformations of James M. Barrie’s dog Nana in cross-cultural translation

IF 0.2 0 LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS
M. Ivankiva
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

The representation of dogs in children’s literature forms the subject of this article. It is framed within the concept of human-canine societies introduced by the French anthropologist Dominique Guillot who claimed that alongside any human society there exists a hybrid society formed by human beings and dogs in which dogs are regarded as its full members. Such societies exist in each country and they generate their own cultures that are developed gradually through ontogenetic ritualization but may change over time. The focus of the following research is the interconnection between children’s literature and such human-canine cultures. I claim that children’s literature is influenced by them and influences them at the same time. The key figure of the research, the Scottish writer James M. Barrie, not only gave dogs the status of full members of the society but endowed them with the status of his muses in his personal, public, and literary life. His own dog, a landseer Newfoundland called Luath, was his pet, friend, muse, and a prototype for Nana, a nanny dog from Barrie’s most famous play Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up. I aim to study and analyze the transformations that occur to Nana when the play was staged, adapted, illustrated and published into a different human-canine culture. The source material of the study is a draft version of the play, the first published version of the play, illustrations for numerous British and American adaptations of the Peter Pan story, and the first Soviet edition of the play. The three parts of the article describe the history of the creation of Nana and the formation of her iconography in Great Britain; the history of the first American production and two further adaptations of the play, as well as the changes that Nana underwent in the American tradition; the history of the first translation of the play in the USSR and the work of the translator and artist in the construction of the Soviet Nana. I come to the conclusion that the image of Nana is formed in the period of time when the contemporary human-pet culture was introduced and incorporated into British mindset. I prove that Nana was Luath’s copy: his character and even his black marks were recreated in Nana’s costume. Moreover, Barrie’s popularity and his daily walks with Luath in Kensington Gardens turned the writer and his dog a landmark in London, so the British iconography of Nana developed rapidly and practically did not change over time. In the United States and the Soviet Union, the countries with their own unique human-dog cultures, Nana was transformed into a St. Bernard and a Cocker Spaniel respectively. Such transformations may be explained by different reasons. While in the United States this is a consequence of the blend of Luath with Barrie’s first dog, St. Bernard Porthos, which the writer himself confessed, in the USSR the reasons were rooted in politics and ideology which to a large extent influenced Soviet human-canine culture and hence the representation of dogs in children’s books.
儿童文学与人犬文化:詹姆斯·m·巴里的狗娜娜在跨文化翻译中的转换
狗在儿童文学中的表现构成了本文的主题。它是在法国人类学家多米尼克·吉洛(Dominique Guillot)提出的人犬社会概念的框架内建立的,他声称,在任何人类社会之外,都存在着一个由人和狗组成的混合社会,其中狗被视为其正式成员。这样的社会存在于每个国家,它们产生了自己的文化,这些文化是通过个体发生的仪式化逐渐发展起来的,但可能随着时间的推移而改变。下面研究的重点是儿童文学与这种人犬文化之间的联系。我认为儿童文学受到他们的影响,同时也影响着他们。这项研究的关键人物是苏格兰作家詹姆斯·m·巴里(James M. Barrie),他不仅赋予狗以社会正式成员的地位,而且在他的个人生活、公共生活和文学生活中赋予它们缪斯的地位。他自己的狗,一只名叫Luath的纽芬兰兰泽犬,是他的宠物、朋友、缪斯,也是巴里最著名的戏剧《彼得潘》(即《不会长大的男孩》)中保姆狗Nana的原型。我的目标是研究和分析娜娜在戏剧被上演、改编、插图和出版到不同的人犬文化时所发生的转变。这项研究的原始材料是剧本的草稿,剧本的第一个出版版本,许多英国和美国改编的彼得潘故事的插图,以及该剧的第一个苏联版本。文章的三个部分描述了娜娜形象在英国的创作历史和她的形象在英国的形成;该剧在美国的第一部作品和后来两次改编的历史,以及《娜娜》在美国传统中所经历的变化;这部剧在苏联的第一次翻译的历史以及翻译和艺术家在苏联娜娜建设中的工作。我的结论是,娜娜的形象形成于当代人类宠物文化被引入并融入英国思维的时期。我证明娜娜是卢斯的复制品:他的性格,甚至他的黑色印记,都在娜娜的服装上重现了。此外,巴里的受欢迎程度和他每天与Luath在肯辛顿花园散步的经历使这位作家和他的狗成为伦敦的地标,因此,娜娜的英国肖像学发展迅速,几乎没有随着时间的推移而改变。在美国和苏联这两个有着独特人狗文化的国家,娜娜分别被改造成了一只圣伯纳犬和一只可卡犬。这种转变可以用不同的原因来解释。而在美国,这是Luath与Barrie的第一只狗St. Bernard Porthos混合的结果,作者自己承认,在苏联,原因植根于政治和意识形态,这在很大程度上影响了苏联人犬文化,因此在儿童书籍中对狗的表现。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
0.40
自引率
50.00%
发文量
0
期刊介绍: Tomsk State University Journal of Philology was established with the aim of: - publishing the papers and reviews on the topical issues of modern philology: linguistics, literary studies, communication studies; - promoting the development of theoretical and practical research in the field of socio-humanitarian knowledge; - forging links among scholars from different regions of Russia and other countries. Tomsk State University Journal of Philology is an independent research journal that welcomes submissions from across the world.
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