Luchkina Olga

What loving Marie should read: a narrative game in addressing the reader in the collection of biographies «The youth of famous people» by Eugene Muller

Abstract

The biography of a famous person is used by writers and educators to demonstrate to children the best qualities and actions and sets social-role models of behavior. The article examines the collection of biographies "The Youth of Famous People" by Eugene Muller from the point of view of gender stereotypes proposed by the writer in connection with the reader's addressing .The main task of the work is to establish which hero was prescribed by E. Muller to the girl reader, what is the specificity of the types of heroes of biograms selected for girl. E. Muller addresses the biographies of famous personalities, retelling the life stories of L. van Beethoven, J. Haydn, G. Galileo, Horace, J.-B. Moliere, V.A. Mozart, N. Paganini, H. Columbus, Napoleon I Bonaparte, P.P. Rubens, E.M. Falcone. In the collection "The Youth of Famous People" the author for several evenings tells the children stories about heroes who are called upon to raise a person with an exemplary character. Muller, using a narrative game with reader addressing, attempted to show different types of child readers to whom certain biographical material corresponds. The 1897 edition (translated by V.D. Vladimirov) contains one hundred and ten biographical episodes, and in the 1912 edition (translated by N. S. Kuteinikov) the number of biographies increased by complementing Russian biographies (Metropolitan Platon, M.V. Lomonosov, M.S.Schepkin, I.A.Krylov, A.S. Pushkin, V.G. Belinsky, N.M. Karamzin, A.V. Suvorov). In gender biographical narratives are uneven. Among one hundred and ten biographies only five images devoted to women: Sophie Germain, Anne Lefebvre, Veronica Maleguzzi, Maria Agnesi, Delphine de Girardin.

Keywords

biography, children's reading, "The youth of famous people", Eugene Muller, reader's addressing, gender, non-fiction, biogram, biographical narrative, biographical history, career biography

References

1. Luchkina O. (2018) “«Iskry Bozhii»: otbor biografi i v reestr dlia detskogo chteniia (na materiale pegadogicheskoi kritiki detskoi literatury” [“Sparks of God”: selection of biographies for children’s reading (based on pedagogical criticism of children’s literature)]. Vestnik Leningradskogo Gosudarstvennogo universiteta imeni A. S. Pushkina, 2018, vol. 2, pp. 141–153 (in Russian).
2. Meshcherkina E. (1994) “Vvedenie” [Introduction], in Biograficheskii metod v sotsiologii. Istoriia, metodologiia i praktika [Biographical method in sociology. History, methodology and practice]. Moscow, p. 5–10 (in Russian).
3. Popova T. (2015) “Bioistorioopisanie v kontekste nauchnykh traditsii: kontsepty i modeli” [Writing biohistory in the context of scientifi c traditions: conceptions and patterns]. Dialog so vremenem, 2012, vol. 53, pp. 34–35 (in Russian).

Information about the author

Luchkina Olga

Place of work: Institute of the Russian Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences; 4 Naberezhnaya Makarova, 199034 St. Petersburg, Russian Federation;
Post: junior researcher;
ORCID: 0000-0002-8184-5309;
Email: olyalukoie@gmail.com.

Acknowledgments

The research was done with the fi nancial support of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research within the framework of the the scientifi c project 19-013-00381 «Pedagogical concepts of socialization in Russian children's literature».