A selection of relevant portuguese children’s literature published in the period of I World War

Abstract

The systemic singularities of children’s literature (Shavit, 2003; Weinreich, 2000) seem to have determined the relative desertification or the inconsistency of critical approach that has been the subject in the field of historiography, being generally ignored their «nodal points», mainly in temporal, topographical, institutional and figurative nature (Cunha, 2011). One of the historical periods whose "historiographical reading" of literary outlines is unrealized with systematizer aim corresponds to the time frame between the beginning and the terminus of the First World War. We will therefore revisite some authors and their works published in Portugal between 1914 and 1918 in an attempt to elucidate technical and expressive singularities, the most relevant ideothematic lines or trends that particularize them. Following some bibliographic repertoires and approaches already implemented, for example, by Gomes (1997) and Rocha (2000), we selected as textual corpus of our brief study a restricted set of works: O Navio dos Brinquedos [The Toy Ship] (1914), de António Sérgio, Era uma Vez [Once Upon a Time] (1916), de Maria Sofia Santo Tirso e, ainda, a série «Polichinelo» (1918-21), de Emília de Sousa Costa. Affiliated under First Republic Literature, these betray aesthetic sensibilities and very different ideologies, giving therefore to understand what was written for children and what they read in wartime.