Worlds Enough—and Time

From Mythic To Linear divides children's literature into three categories according to the representation of underlying temporal structure: as an irreversible, linear flow (Collapse), as recurrent, reproducible patterns (Utopia), or as something in between (Carnival). The argument proceeds through comparisons and analyses of individual texts, including such literary classics as Peter Pan, Tom's Midnight Garden, Little Women, The Wind in the Willows, and Tom Sawyer, and many titles more obscure. Indeed, Maria Nikolajeva's broad familiarity with children's texts, Swedish and Russian in particular, is her book's strongest asset, though no less impressive is her way with critical methodology, such as Jungian criticism and narratology, her intellectual engagement with published criticism, and a bold, forthright style of argument. It is with these in mind that I particularly commend From Mythic to Linear as a noteworthy event.

Beginning with the mythic, Nikolajeva discusses texts that portray childhood Utopia, or Arcadia—a timeless idyll, or a "cyclical time"—in which the characters dwell in a serene, pastoral setting unaffected by the passing world. Intrepidly crossing genre boundaries, she treats diverse kinds of material, including pastoral and domestic fiction, animal stories, toy stories, and social Utopias. The underlying temporal structures of these works are fundamentally the same, she argues, and consubstantial with what might be termed the paradisiacal monomyth, comprising seven features: importance of setting, separation from others, social harmony, freedom from encumbrances of civilization, special significance of home, absence of death and sexuality, and overall innocence (21). Nikolajeva's discussion of Soviet utopias here is particularly engaging and supports the position that Arcadian literature en toto stifles personal development. Nikolajeva concludes this section with a discussion of "one of the most painful themes in children's fiction: the child who is reluctant to grow up" (87). Regardless of whether one agrees with her scholarly assessments of Winnie the Pooh, Peter Pan, Tom's Midnight Garden, and Tuck Everlasting, they clearly help to demonstrate the vast scope and variety of the Arcadian myth.

The next section looks at texts portraying an interruption in Arcadian time, a "picnic in the unknown" (passim). This section continues the broadly comparativist approach, moving freely between realism and fantasy, reviewing stories of time travel, secondary world fantasies, and female initiation. Carnival texts include such well-known novels as Tom Sawyer, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Bridge to Terabithia. Whatever befalls the characters in these novels and stories, they are assured of returning home, none the worse for wear. Having discussed food in her first section and asserted that in children's literature, it "corresponds to sexuality in the mainstream" (11), Nikolajeva returns to the discussion here. One can appreciate that in a book of encyclopedic scope (her index lists more than two hundred children's books), it would be impossible to fully pursue this comparison, though one wishes for greater specificity and definition. Certainly one cannot usefully infer a single set of meanings from "sexuality in the mainstream" literature; and the assurance that "food and sexuality are interchangeable in myth" (131) seems more revelatory than definitive.

Nikolajeva concedes the differences between Carnival, or "there-and-back" stories, and "there" (Collapse) stories are "subtle," for which I think readers confused about the placement of certain texts will be grateful. Nikolajeva relies upon the question of whether the protagonist—or something she calls "the collective protagonist"—experiences personal development to guide her understanding of temporal structure. In Arcadian literature, personal development is inconceivable; in Carnival literature, it becomes a tantalizing possibility; and in Collapse, it figures as the preeminent element, the purpose or consolation of suffering. Nevertheless, the overriding values of categories are heuristic and catalytic. Certainly readers can and should arrive at different conclusions about particular texts or, perhaps even short of a conclusion, without casting doubt on the means of decision making.

The last chapters of From Mythic to Linear look at texts that represent "linearity," or a collapse of "cyclical time" into temporality, such as YA novels, travel instructions and—an ingenious...