A Model Childhood – For Boys and/or Girls. Czech Comic Series about Two Schoolkids from Late 1930s and Early 1940s

0577273 - ÚČL 2024 eng A3 - Přednáška/prezentace nepublikovaná
Kořínková, Lucie - Kořínek, Pavel
A Model Childhood – For Boys and/or Girls. Czech Comic Series about Two Schoolkids from Late 1930s and Early 1940s.
[Comics, the Children and Childishness. Ghent, 18.09.2023-19.09.2023]
Způsob prezentace: Přednáška
Pořadatel akce: Ghent University
URL akce: https://www.comics.ugent.be/cfp-comics-the-children-and-childishness/ 
Institucionální podpora: RVO:68378068
Klíčová slova: comic series Růda a Slávnika * Punťa, the magazine * Children's literature and comics * Czechoslovakia in 1930s and 1940s * childhood
Obor OECD: Specific literatures

The magazine Punťa, published between 1935 and 1942 by the Prague based publishing house Rodina (Family), was one of the most prominent publishing platforms for children´s comics at the time in Czechoslovakia. Commercially oriented, Disney inspired and rather rejected by the Czech didactic critique of the time, the bi-weekly magazine provided space for humoristic, adventure and fairy tale comics, whose protagonists were usually anthropomorphized animals (titular Punťa the Dog) or supernatural creatures. One of the magazine´s most extensive series, however, differed from this rule: the series Růda a Slávinka, scripted by the editorial writers (Marie Voříšková, Julie Kaublová, Blanka Svačinová) and drawn by the future famous Czech animator Hermína Týrlová, brought little stories about a couple of childhood friends. The almost consistently episodic series Růda a Slávinka (1938-1941, 94 pages) brings stories full ofchildren's everyday life, the small adventures of the school year, and as such the series lacks any significant drama, fully realised story-arcs or significant plot twists. Better than the other series printed in the magazine, however, it reflects contemporary Czech - and editorial - ideas of childhood and children's everydayness. Printed in the turbulent years of major socio-political transformations (its publication spans the First Czechoslovak Republic, the Second Czechoslovak Republic and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia), the series remained apolitical in its basic boundaries: however, a shift from cosmopolitanism to domesticity can be identified throughout the magazine and uncertainties of its time occasionally flash through (as in the episode when Slávinka tries on a gas mask).
Trvalý link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0346492