A Cognitive Approach to Postmodern Children’s Production: New Reflections on an Adult Readership

Abstract

The critical approach to children’s literature has delved into manifold aspects concerning the level of sophistication of these texts and the interpretative possibilities that they can offer to adult readers. Innovation and experiment are no longer treated as “abnormal” elements in texts for children, but rather considered as proofs that the literary praxis has evolved into more sophisticated levels of accomplishment. Cognitive poetics has a relevant role in this study and, more concretely, the notion of “conceptual metaphors”. The main goal of this study is to construct a cognitive reading of the JOURNEY metaphor, which seems to underlie the majority of children’s texts and folktales, by exploring two poems by British author Neil Gaiman — “Locks” and “Inventing Aladdin”, both extracted from the compilation Fragile Things. For this purpose, I will take into consideration some interesting concepts by Wójcik-Leese referring to the conceptual metaphor LIFE IS A JOURNEY, but applied to the specific writing of a text. In so doing, this analysis will undertake diverse modes in which current literature deconstructs and reverses the traditional models for folktales and children’s literature.