A few reflections on truhelkas book about a woman, a bird and a house made of imagination: Pipo I Pipa

Abstract

© 2019 Croatian Association of Researchers in Children's Literature. All rights reserved. The paper attempts to contribute to the contemporary readings of Pipo i Pipa [Pipo and Pipa] (1923) by Jagoda Truhelka. After tracing one of the critical texts from the Serbian academic context, attention is paid to several analytically and interpretatively challenging topics, including: sentimentality, narrative dynamism, the system of ideas and values (on women's identity and destiny; on the principles of goodness, mercy and giving; on loneliness and fantasy; on the relationship between childhood and being old; on the relationship between people and animals; on literature), and on the semantics and symbolism of certain structural aspects. Compared to Zlatni danci [The Golden Days], however, this book by Truhelka has been critically marginalised; it is intriguing both in efforts to understand other literary works by Truhelka, and to understand the historical, poetic, genre-related, stylistic, and conceptual trends in the development of Croatian literature for children.