ETHICS AND ARTISTIC METHODS IN TOVE JANSSON’S MOOMIN SUITE

А. Рехал Йоханссон

Abstract


In my article I will focus on the ethics of Tove Jansson’s by analyzing her grotesque aesthetics and the way she treats and shaps her figures in her final Moomin suite. The Moomin Suite is the author´s final, overall Moomin work consisting in eight books, published after a second and radical set of revision in 1969–1970. In the Suite there is a special ‘emotional-axiological attitude’ (Bachtin) toward the characters, that includes an unprejudiced interest to each of them regardless of their differing characteristics or inclinations. There is also an abolition of conventional hierarchies of values represented by the characters,that is, between ridiculous and admirable personalities, between desirable and pitiful qualities, between one desire and another. The author’s use of grotesque, a guileless narrator, shaped to correspond to the naïve characters’ imaginations and conceptual worlds, a mask of psychological naïvité and character studies without psychological introspection are some of the artistic methods I will deal with.

Keywords


Tove Jansson, Moomin books, ethics, grotesque, Bachtin, naïvism

References


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